Storage layer data obfuscation

ABSTRACT

Storage layer data obfuscation, including: determining a subset of a dataset to obfuscate in accordance with a security policy; generating, based at least in part on the security policy, an obfuscated snapshot of the dataset that is representative of the dataset with the subset of the dataset obfuscated; and sending, to a target computer system, the obfuscated snapshot from which a restored version of the dataset includes the subset of the dataset obfuscated.

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

This application is a continuation-in-part of and claims priority fromU.S. patent application Ser. No. 16/050,698, filed Jul. 31, 2018, whichclaims the benefit of earlier-filed U.S. Provisional Patent ApplicationSer. No. 62/674,570, filed May 21, 2018 and U.S. Provisional PatentApplication Ser. No. 62/695,433, filed Jul. 9, 2018; and is anon-provisional application for patent entitled to a filing date andclaiming the benefit of earlier-filed U.S. Provisional PatentApplication Ser. No. 62/750,764, filed Oct. 25, 2018.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF DRAWINGS

FIG. 1A illustrates a first example system for data storage inaccordance with some implementations.

FIG. 1B illustrates a second example system for data storage inaccordance with some implementations.

FIG. 1C illustrates a third example system for data storage inaccordance with some implementations.

FIG. 1D illustrates a fourth example system for data storage inaccordance with some implementations.

FIG. 2A is a perspective view of a storage cluster with multiple storagenodes and internal storage coupled to each storage node to providenetwork attached storage, in accordance with some embodiments.

FIG. 2B is a block diagram showing an interconnect switch couplingmultiple storage nodes in accordance with some embodiments.

FIG. 2C is a multiple level block diagram, showing contents of a storagenode and contents of one of the non-volatile solid state storage unitsin accordance with some embodiments.

FIG. 2D shows a storage server environment, which uses embodiments ofthe storage nodes and storage units of some previous figures inaccordance with some embodiments.

FIG. 2E is a blade hardware block diagram, showing a control plane,compute and storage planes, and authorities interacting with underlyingphysical resources, in accordance with some embodiments.

FIG. 2F depicts elasticity software layers in blades of a storagecluster, in accordance with some embodiments.

FIG. 2G depicts authorities and storage resources in blades of a storagecluster, in accordance with some embodiments.

FIG. 3A sets forth a diagram of a storage system that is coupled fordata communications with a cloud services provider in accordance withsome embodiments of the present disclosure.

FIG. 3B sets forth a diagram of a storage system in accordance with someembodiments of the present disclosure.

FIG. 4 sets forth a diagrams of metadata representations that may beimplemented as a structured collection of metadata objects that mayrepresent a logical volume of storage data, or a portion of a logicalvolume such as a dataset accordance with some embodiments of the presentdisclosure.

FIG. 4B sets forth diagrams of a storage service for providing storagelayer data obfuscation in accordance with some embodiments of thepresent disclosure.

FIG. 5 sets forth a flow chart illustrating an example method of storagelayer data obfuscation in accordance with some embodiments of thepresent disclosure.

FIG. 6 sets forth a flow chart illustrating an example method of storagelayer data obfuscation in accordance with some embodiments of thepresent disclosure.

DESCRIPTION OF EMBODIMENTS

Example methods, apparatus, and products for storage layer dataobfuscation in accordance with embodiments of the present disclosure aredescribed with reference to the accompanying drawings, beginning withFIG. 1A. FIG. 1A illustrates an example system for data storage, inaccordance with some implementations. System 100 (also referred to as“storage system” herein) includes numerous elements for purposes ofillustration rather than limitation. It may be noted that system 100 mayinclude the same, more, or fewer elements configured in the same ordifferent manner in other implementations.

System 100 includes a number of computing devices 164A-B. Computingdevices (also referred to as “client devices” herein) may be embodied,for example, a server in a data center, a workstation, a personalcomputer, a notebook, or the like. Computing devices 164A-B may becoupled for data communications to one or more storage arrays 102A-Bthrough a storage area network (‘SAN’) 158 or a local area network(‘LAN’) 160.

The SAN 158 may be implemented with a variety of data communicationsfabrics, devices, and protocols. For example, the fabrics for SAN 158may include Fibre Channel, Ethernet, Infiniband, Serial Attached SmallComputer System Interface (‘SAS’), or the like. Data communicationsprotocols for use with SAN 158 may include Advanced TechnologyAttachment (‘ATA’), Fibre Channel Protocol, Small Computer SystemInterface (‘SCSI’), Internet Small Computer System Interface (‘iSCSI’),HyperSCSI, Non-Volatile Memory Express (‘NVMe’) over Fabrics, or thelike. It may be noted that SAN 158 is provided for illustration, ratherthan limitation. Other data communication couplings may be implementedbetween computing devices 164A-B and storage arrays 102A-B.

The LAN 160 may also be implemented with a variety of fabrics, devices,and protocols. For example, the fabrics for LAN 160 may include Ethernet(802.3), wireless (802.11), or the like. Data communication protocolsfor use in LAN 160 may include Transmission Control Protocol (‘TCP’),User Datagram Protocol (‘UDP’), Internet Protocol (‘IP’), HyperTextTransfer Protocol (‘HTTP’), Wireless Access Protocol (‘WAP’), HandheldDevice Transport Protocol (‘HDTP’), Session Initiation Protocol (‘SIP’),Real Time Protocol (‘RTP’), or the like.

Storage arrays 102A-B may provide persistent data storage for thecomputing devices 164A-B. Storage array 102A may be contained in achassis (not shown), and storage array 102B may be contained in anotherchassis (not shown), in implementations. Storage array 102A and 102B mayinclude one or more storage array controllers 110A-D (also referred toas “controller” herein). A storage array controller 110A-D may beembodied as a module of automated computing machinery comprisingcomputer hardware, computer software, or a combination of computerhardware and software. In some implementations, the storage arraycontrollers 110A-D may be configured to carry out various storage tasks.Storage tasks may include writing data received from the computingdevices 164A-B to storage array 102A-B, erasing data from storage array102A-B, retrieving data from storage array 102A-B and providing data tocomputing devices 164A-B, monitoring and reporting of disk utilizationand performance, performing redundancy operations, such as RedundantArray of Independent Drives (‘RAID’) or RAID-like data redundancyoperations, compressing data, encrypting data, and so forth.

Storage array controller 110A-D may be implemented in a variety of ways,including as a Field Programmable Gate Array (‘FPGA’), a ProgrammableLogic Chip (‘PLC’), an Application Specific Integrated Circuit (‘ASIC’),System-on-Chip (‘SOC’), or any computing device that includes discretecomponents such as a processing device, central processing unit,computer memory, or various adapters. Storage array controller 110A-Dmay include, for example, a data communications adapter configured tosupport communications via the SAN 158 or LAN 160. In someimplementations, storage array controller 110A-D may be independentlycoupled to the LAN 160. In implementations, storage array controller110A-D may include an I/O controller or the like that couples thestorage array controller 110A-D for data communications, through amidplane (not shown), to a persistent storage resource 170A-B (alsoreferred to as a “storage resource” herein). The persistent storageresource 170A-B main include any number of storage drives 171A-F (alsoreferred to as “storage devices” herein) and any number of non-volatileRandom Access Memory (‘NVRAM’) devices (not shown).

In some implementations, the NVRAM devices of a persistent storageresource 170A-B may be configured to receive, from the storage arraycontroller 110A-D, data to be stored in the storage drives 171A-F. Insome examples, the data may originate from computing devices 164A-B. Insome examples, writing data to the NVRAM device may be carried out morequickly than directly writing data to the storage drive 171A-F. Inimplementations, the storage array controller 110A-D may be configuredto utilize the NVRAM devices as a quickly accessible buffer for datadestined to be written to the storage drives 171A-F. Latency for writerequests using NVRAM devices as a buffer may be improved relative to asystem in which a storage array controller 110A-D writes data directlyto the storage drives 171A-F. In some implementations, the NVRAM devicesmay be implemented with computer memory in the form of high bandwidth,low latency RAM. The NVRAM device is referred to as “non-volatile”because the NVRAM device may receive or include a unique power sourcethat maintains the state of the RAM after main power loss to the NVRAMdevice. Such a power source may be a battery, one or more capacitors, orthe like. In response to a power loss, the NVRAM device may beconfigured to write the contents of the RAM to a persistent storage,such as the storage drives 171A-F.

In implementations, storage drive 171A-F may refer to any deviceconfigured to record data persistently, where “persistently” or“persistent” refers as to a device's ability to maintain recorded dataafter loss of power. In some implementations, storage drive 171A-F maycorrespond to non-disk storage media. For example, the storage drive171A-F may be one or more solid-state drives (‘SSDs’), flash memorybased storage, any type of solid-state non-volatile memory, or any othertype of non-mechanical storage device. In other implementations, storagedrive 171A-F may include mechanical or spinning hard disk, such ashard-disk drives (‘HDD’).

In some implementations, the storage array controllers 110A-D may beconfigured for offloading device management responsibilities fromstorage drive 171A-F in storage array 102A-B. For example, storage arraycontrollers 110A-D may manage control information that may describe thestate of one or more memory blocks in the storage drives 171A-F. Thecontrol information may indicate, for example, that a particular memoryblock has failed and should no longer be written to, that a particularmemory block contains boot code for a storage array controller 110A-D,the number of program-erase (‘P/E’) cycles that have been performed on aparticular memory block, the age of data stored in a particular memoryblock, the type of data that is stored in a particular memory block, andso forth. In some implementations, the control information may be storedwith an associated memory block as metadata. In other implementations,the control information for the storage drives 171A-F may be stored inone or more particular memory blocks of the storage drives 171A-F thatare selected by the storage array controller 110A-D. The selected memoryblocks may be tagged with an identifier indicating that the selectedmemory block contains control information. The identifier may beutilized by the storage array controllers 110A-D in conjunction withstorage drives 171A-F to quickly identify the memory blocks that containcontrol information. For example, the storage controllers 110A-D mayissue a command to locate memory blocks that contain controlinformation. It may be noted that control information may be so largethat parts of the control information may be stored in multiplelocations, that the control information may be stored in multiplelocations for purposes of redundancy, for example, or that the controlinformation may otherwise be distributed across multiple memory blocksin the storage drive 171A-F.

In implementations, storage array controllers 110A-D may offload devicemanagement responsibilities from storage drives 171A-F of storage array102A-B by retrieving, from the storage drives 171A-F, controlinformation describing the state of one or more memory blocks in thestorage drives 171A-F. Retrieving the control information from thestorage drives 171A-F may be carried out, for example, by the storagearray controller 110A-D querying the storage drives 171A-F for thelocation of control information for a particular storage drive 171A-F.The storage drives 171A-F may be configured to execute instructions thatenable the storage drive 171A-F to identify the location of the controlinformation. The instructions may be executed by a controller (notshown) associated with or otherwise located on the storage drive 171A-Fand may cause the storage drive 171A-F to scan a portion of each memoryblock to identify the memory blocks that store control information forthe storage drives 171A-F. The storage drives 171A-F may respond bysending a response message to the storage array controller 110A-D thatincludes the location of control information for the storage drive171A-F. Responsive to receiving the response message, storage arraycontrollers 110A-D may issue a request to read data stored at theaddress associated with the location of control information for thestorage drives 171A-F.

In other implementations, the storage array controllers 110A-D mayfurther offload device management responsibilities from storage drives171A-F by performing, in response to receiving the control information,a storage drive management operation. A storage drive managementoperation may include, for example, an operation that is typicallyperformed by the storage drive 171A-F (e.g., the controller (not shown)associated with a particular storage drive 171A-F). A storage drivemanagement operation may include, for example, ensuring that data is notwritten to failed memory blocks within the storage drive 171A-F,ensuring that data is written to memory blocks within the storage drive171A-F in such a way that adequate wear leveling is achieved, and soforth.

In implementations, storage array 102A-B may implement two or morestorage array controllers 110A-D. For example, storage array 102A mayinclude storage array controllers 110A and storage array controllers110B. At a given instance, a single storage array controller 110A-D(e.g., storage array controller 110A) of a storage system 100 may bedesignated with primary status (also referred to as “primary controller”herein), and other storage array controllers 110A-D (e.g., storage arraycontroller 110A) may be designated with secondary status (also referredto as “secondary controller” herein). The primary controller may haveparticular rights, such as permission to alter data in persistentstorage resource 170A-B (e.g., writing data to persistent storageresource 170A-B). At least some of the rights of the primary controllermay supersede the rights of the secondary controller. For instance, thesecondary controller may not have permission to alter data in persistentstorage resource 170A-B when the primary controller has the right. Thestatus of storage array controllers 110A-D may change. For example,storage array controller 110A may be designated with secondary status,and storage array controller 110B may be designated with primary status.

In some implementations, a primary controller, such as storage arraycontroller 110A, may serve as the primary controller for one or morestorage arrays 102A-B, and a second controller, such as storage arraycontroller 110B, may serve as the secondary controller for the one ormore storage arrays 102A-B. For example, storage array controller 110Amay be the primary controller for storage array 102A and storage array102B, and storage array controller 110B may be the secondary controllerfor storage array 102A and 102B. In some implementations, storage arraycontrollers 110C and 110D (also referred to as “storage processingmodules”) may neither have primary or secondary status. Storage arraycontrollers 110C and 110D, implemented as storage processing modules,may act as a communication interface between the primary and secondarycontrollers (e.g., storage array controllers 110A and 110B,respectively) and storage array 102B. For example, storage arraycontroller 110A of storage array 102A may send a write request, via SAN158, to storage array 102B. The write request may be received by bothstorage array controllers 110C and 110D of storage array 102B. Storagearray controllers 110C and 110D facilitate the communication, e.g., sendthe write request to the appropriate storage drive 171A-F. It may benoted that in some implementations storage processing modules may beused to increase the number of storage drives controlled by the primaryand secondary controllers.

In implementations, storage array controllers 110A-D are communicativelycoupled, via a midplane (not shown), to one or more storage drives171A-F and to one or more NVRAM devices (not shown) that are included aspart of a storage array 102A-B. The storage array controllers 110A-D maybe coupled to the midplane via one or more data communication links andthe midplane may be coupled to the storage drives 171A-F and the NVRAMdevices via one or more data communications links. The datacommunications links described herein are collectively illustrated bydata communications links 108A-D and may include a Peripheral ComponentInterconnect Express (‘PCIe’) bus, for example.

FIG. 1B illustrates an example system for data storage, in accordancewith some implementations. Storage array controller 101 illustrated inFIG. 1B may similar to the storage array controllers 110A-D describedwith respect to FIG. 1A. In one example, storage array controller 101may be similar to storage array controller 110A or storage arraycontroller 110B. Storage array controller 101 includes numerous elementsfor purposes of illustration rather than limitation. It may be notedthat storage array controller 101 may include the same, more, or fewerelements configured in the same or different manner in otherimplementations. It may be noted that elements of FIG. 1A may beincluded below to help illustrate features of storage array controller101.

Storage array controller 101 may include one or more processing devices104 and random access memory (‘RAM’) 111. Processing device 104 (orcontroller 101) represents one or more general-purpose processingdevices such as a microprocessor, central processing unit, or the like.More particularly, the processing device 104 (or controller 101) may bea complex instruction set computing (‘CISC’) microprocessor, reducedinstruction set computing (‘RISC’) microprocessor, very long instructionword (‘VLIW’) microprocessor, or a processor implementing otherinstruction sets or processors implementing a combination of instructionsets. The processing device 104 (or controller 101) may also be one ormore special-purpose processing devices such as an application specificintegrated circuit (‘ASIC’), a field programmable gate array (‘FPGA’), adigital signal processor (‘DSP’), network processor, or the like.

The processing device 104 may be connected to the RAM 111 via a datacommunications link 106, which may be embodied as a high speed memorybus such as a Double-Data Rate 4 (‘DDR4’) bus. Stored in RAM 111 is anoperating system 112. In some implementations, instructions 113 arestored in RAM 111. Instructions 113 may include computer programinstructions for performing operations in in a direct-mapped flashstorage system. In one embodiment, a direct-mapped flash storage systemis one that that addresses data blocks within flash drives directly andwithout an address translation performed by the storage controllers ofthe flash drives.

In implementations, storage array controller 101 includes one or morehost bus adapters 103A-C that are coupled to the processing device 104via a data communications link 105A-C. In implementations, host busadapters 103A-C may be computer hardware that connects a host system(e.g., the storage array controller) to other network and storagearrays. In some examples, host bus adapters 103A-C may be a FibreChannel adapter that enables the storage array controller 101 to connectto a SAN, an Ethernet adapter that enables the storage array controller101 to connect to a LAN, or the like. Host bus adapters 103A-C may becoupled to the processing device 104 via a data communications link105A-C such as, for example, a PCIe bus.

In implementations, storage array controller 101 may include a host busadapter 114 that is coupled to an expander 115. The expander 115 may beused to attach a host system to a larger number of storage drives. Theexpander 115 may, for example, be a SAS expander utilized to enable thehost bus adapter 114 to attach to storage drives in an implementationwhere the host bus adapter 114 is embodied as a SAS controller.

In implementations, storage array controller 101 may include a switch116 coupled to the processing device 104 via a data communications link109. The switch 116 may be a computer hardware device that can createmultiple endpoints out of a single endpoint, thereby enabling multipledevices to share a single endpoint. The switch 116 may, for example, bea PCIe switch that is coupled to a PCIe bus (e.g., data communicationslink 109) and presents multiple PCIe connection points to the midplane.

In implementations, storage array controller 101 includes a datacommunications link 107 for coupling the storage array controller 101 toother storage array controllers. In some examples, data communicationslink 107 may be a QuickPath Interconnect (QPI) interconnect.

A traditional storage system that uses traditional flash drives mayimplement a process across the flash drives that are part of thetraditional storage system. For example, a higher level process of thestorage system may initiate and control a process across the flashdrives. However, a flash drive of the traditional storage system mayinclude its own storage controller that also performs the process. Thus,for the traditional storage system, a higher level process (e.g.,initiated by the storage system) and a lower level process (e.g.,initiated by a storage controller of the storage system) may both beperformed.

To resolve various deficiencies of a traditional storage system,operations may be performed by higher level processes and not by thelower level processes. For example, the flash storage system may includeflash drives that do not include storage controllers that provide theprocess. Thus, the operating system of the flash storage system itselfmay initiate and control the process. This may be accomplished by adirect-mapped flash storage system that addresses data blocks within theflash drives directly and without an address translation performed bythe storage controllers of the flash drives.

The operating system of the flash storage system may identify andmaintain a list of allocation units across multiple flash drives of theflash storage system. The allocation units may be entire erase blocks ormultiple erase blocks. The operating system may maintain a map oraddress range that directly maps addresses to erase blocks of the flashdrives of the flash storage system.

Direct mapping to the erase blocks of the flash drives may be used torewrite data and erase data. For example, the operations may beperformed on one or more allocation units that include a first data anda second data where the first data is to be retained and the second datais no longer being used by the flash storage system. The operatingsystem may initiate the process to write the first data to new locationswithin other allocation units and erasing the second data and markingthe allocation units as being available for use for subsequent data.Thus, the process may only be performed by the higher level operatingsystem of the flash storage system without an additional lower levelprocess being performed by controllers of the flash drives.

Advantages of the process being performed only by the operating systemof the flash storage system include increased reliability of the flashdrives of the flash storage system as unnecessary or redundant writeoperations are not being performed during the process. One possiblepoint of novelty here is the concept of initiating and controlling theprocess at the operating system of the flash storage system. Inaddition, the process can be controlled by the operating system acrossmultiple flash drives. This is contrast to the process being performedby a storage controller of a flash drive.

A storage system can consist of two storage array controllers that sharea set of drives for failover purposes, or it could consist of a singlestorage array controller that provides a storage service that utilizesmultiple drives, or it could consist of a distributed network of storagearray controllers each with some number of drives or some amount ofFlash storage where the storage array controllers in the networkcollaborate to provide a complete storage service and collaborate onvarious aspects of a storage service including storage allocation andgarbage collection.

FIG. 1C illustrates a third example system 117 for data storage inaccordance with some implementations. System 117 (also referred to as“storage system” herein) includes numerous elements for purposes ofillustration rather than limitation. It may be noted that system 117 mayinclude the same, more, or fewer elements configured in the same ordifferent manner in other implementations.

In one embodiment, system 117 includes a dual Peripheral ComponentInterconnect (‘PCI’) flash storage device 118 with separatelyaddressable fast write storage. System 117 may include a storagecontroller 119. In one embodiment, storage controller 119A-D may be aCPU, ASIC, FPGA, or any other circuitry that may implement controlstructures necessary according to the present disclosure. In oneembodiment, system 117 includes flash memory devices (e.g., includingflash memory devices 120 a-n), operatively coupled to various channelsof the storage device controller 119. Flash memory devices 120 a-n, maybe presented to the controller 119A-D as an addressable collection ofFlash pages, erase blocks, and/or control elements sufficient to allowthe storage device controller 119A-D to program and retrieve variousaspects of the Flash. In one embodiment, storage device controller119A-D may perform operations on flash memory devices 120 a-n includingstoring and retrieving data content of pages, arranging and erasing anyblocks, tracking statistics related to the use and reuse of Flash memorypages, erase blocks, and cells, tracking and predicting error codes andfaults within the Flash memory, controlling voltage levels associatedwith programming and retrieving contents of Flash cells, etc.

In one embodiment, system 117 may include RAM 121 to store separatelyaddressable fast-write data. In one embodiment, RAM 121 may be one ormore separate discrete devices. In another embodiment, RAM 121 may beintegrated into storage device controller 119A-D or multiple storagedevice controllers. The RAM 121 may be utilized for other purposes aswell, such as temporary program memory for a processing device (e.g., aCPU) in the storage device controller 119.

In one embodiment, system 117 may include a stored energy device 122,such as a rechargeable battery or a capacitor. Stored energy device 122may store energy sufficient to power the storage device controller 119,some amount of the RAM (e.g., RAM 121), and some amount of Flash memory(e.g., Flash memory 120 a-120 n) for sufficient time to write thecontents of RAM to Flash memory. In one embodiment, storage devicecontroller 119A-D may write the contents of RAM to Flash Memory if thestorage device controller detects loss of external power.

In one embodiment, system 117 includes two data communications links 123a, 123 b. In one embodiment, data communications links 123 a, 123 b maybe PCI interfaces. In another embodiment, data communications links 123a, 123 b may be based on other communications standards (e.g.,HyperTransport, InfiniBand, etc.). Data communications links 123 a, 123b may be based on non-volatile memory express (‘NVMe’) or NVMe overfabrics (‘NVMf’) specifications that allow external connection to thestorage device controller 119A-D from other components in the storagesystem 117. It should be noted that data communications links may beinterchangeably referred to herein as PCI buses for convenience.

System 117 may also include an external power source (not shown), whichmay be provided over one or both data communications links 123 a, 123 b,or which may be provided separately. An alternative embodiment includesa separate Flash memory (not shown) dedicated for use in storing thecontent of RAM 121. The storage device controller 119A-D may present alogical device over a PCI bus which may include an addressablefast-write logical device, or a distinct part of the logical addressspace of the storage device 118, which may be presented as PCI memory oras persistent storage. In one embodiment, operations to store into thedevice are directed into the RAM 121. On power failure, the storagedevice controller 119A-D may write stored content associated with theaddressable fast-write logical storage to Flash memory (e.g., Flashmemory 120 a-n) for long-term persistent storage.

In one embodiment, the logical device may include some presentation ofsome or all of the content of the Flash memory devices 120 a-n, wherethat presentation allows a storage system including a storage device 118(e.g., storage system 117) to directly address Flash memory pages anddirectly reprogram erase blocks from storage system components that areexternal to the storage device through the PCI bus. The presentation mayalso allow one or more of the external components to control andretrieve other aspects of the Flash memory including some or all of:tracking statistics related to use and reuse of Flash memory pages,erase blocks, and cells across all the Flash memory devices; trackingand predicting error codes and faults within and across the Flash memorydevices; controlling voltage levels associated with programming andretrieving contents of Flash cells; etc.

In one embodiment, the stored energy device 122 may be sufficient toensure completion of in-progress operations to the Flash memory devices120 a-120 n stored energy device 122 may power storage device controller119A-D and associated Flash memory devices (e.g., 120 a-n) for thoseoperations, as well as for the storing of fast-write RAM to Flashmemory. Stored energy device 122 may be used to store accumulatedstatistics and other parameters kept and tracked by the Flash memorydevices 120 a-n and/or the storage device controller 119. Separatecapacitors or stored energy devices (such as smaller capacitors near orembedded within the Flash memory devices themselves) may be used forsome or all of the operations described herein.

Various schemes may be used to track and optimize the life span of thestored energy component, such as adjusting voltage levels over time,partially discharging the storage energy device 122 to measurecorresponding discharge characteristics, etc. If the available energydecreases over time, the effective available capacity of the addressablefast-write storage may be decreased to ensure that it can be writtensafely based on the currently available stored energy.

FIG. 1D illustrates a third example system 124 for data storage inaccordance with some implementations. In one embodiment, system 124includes storage controllers 125 a, 125 b. In one embodiment, storagecontrollers 125 a, 125 b are operatively coupled to Dual PCI storagedevices 119 a, 119 b and 119 c, 119 d, respectively. Storage controllers125 a, 125 b may be operatively coupled (e.g., via a storage network130) to some number of host computers 127 a-n.

In one embodiment, two storage controllers (e.g., 125 a and 125 b)provide storage services, such as a SCS) block storage array, a fileserver, an object server, a database or data analytics service, etc. Thestorage controllers 125 a, 125 b may provide services through somenumber of network interfaces (e.g., 126 a-d) to host computers 127 a-noutside of the storage system 124. Storage controllers 125 a, 125 b mayprovide integrated services or an application entirely within thestorage system 124, forming a converged storage and compute system. Thestorage controllers 125 a, 125 b may utilize the fast write memorywithin or across storage devices 119 a-d to journal in progressoperations to ensure the operations are not lost on a power failure,storage controller removal, storage controller or storage systemshutdown, or some fault of one or more software or hardware componentswithin the storage system 124.

In one embodiment, controllers 125 a, 125 b operate as PCI masters toone or the other PCI buses 128 a, 128 b. In another embodiment, 128 aand 128 b may be based on other communications standards (e.g.,HyperTransport, InfiniBand, etc.). Other storage system embodiments mayoperate storage controllers 125 a, 125 b as multi-masters for both PCIbuses 128 a, 128 b. Alternately, a PCI/NVMe/NVMf switchinginfrastructure or fabric may connect multiple storage controllers. Somestorage system embodiments may allow storage devices to communicate witheach other directly rather than communicating only with storagecontrollers. In one embodiment, a storage device controller 119 a may beoperable under direction from a storage controller 125 a to synthesizeand transfer data to be stored into Flash memory devices from data thathas been stored in RAM (e.g., RAM 121 of FIG. 1C). For example, arecalculated version of RAM content may be transferred after a storagecontroller has determined that an operation has fully committed acrossthe storage system, or when fast-write memory on the device has reacheda certain used capacity, or after a certain amount of time, to ensureimprove safety of the data or to release addressable fast-write capacityfor reuse. This mechanism may be used, for example, to avoid a secondtransfer over a bus (e.g., 128 a, 128 b) from the storage controllers125 a, 125 b. In one embodiment, a recalculation may include compressingdata, attaching indexing or other metadata, combining multiple datasegments together, performing erasure code calculations, etc.

In one embodiment, under direction from a storage controller 125 a, 125b, a storage device controller 119 a, 119 b may be operable to calculateand transfer data to other storage devices from data stored in RAM(e.g., RAM 121 of FIG. 1C) without involvement of the storagecontrollers 125 a, 125 b. This operation may be used to mirror datastored in one controller 125 a to another controller 125 b, or it couldbe used to offload compression, data aggregation, and/or erasure codingcalculations and transfers to storage devices to reduce load on storagecontrollers or the storage controller interface 129 a, 129 b to the PCIbus 128 a, 128 b.

A storage device controller 119A-D may include mechanisms forimplementing high availability primitives for use by other parts of astorage system external to the Dual PCI storage device 118. For example,reservation or exclusion primitives may be provided so that, in astorage system with two storage controllers providing a highly availablestorage service, one storage controller may prevent the other storagecontroller from accessing or continuing to access the storage device.This could be used, for example, in cases where one controller detectsthat the other controller is not functioning properly or where theinterconnect between the two storage controllers may itself not befunctioning properly.

In one embodiment, a storage system for use with Dual PCI direct mappedstorage devices with separately addressable fast write storage includessystems that manage erase blocks or groups of erase blocks as allocationunits for storing data on behalf of the storage service, or for storingmetadata (e.g., indexes, logs, etc.) associated with the storageservice, or for proper management of the storage system itself. Flashpages, which may be a few kilobytes in size, may be written as dataarrives or as the storage system is to persist data for long intervalsof time (e.g., above a defined threshold of time). To commit data morequickly, or to reduce the number of writes to the Flash memory devices,the storage controllers may first write data into the separatelyaddressable fast write storage on one more storage devices.

In one embodiment, the storage controllers 125 a, 125 b may initiate theuse of erase blocks within and across storage devices (e.g., 118) inaccordance with an age and expected remaining lifespan of the storagedevices, or based on other statistics. The storage controllers 125 a,125 b may initiate garbage collection and data migration data betweenstorage devices in accordance with pages that are no longer needed aswell as to manage Flash page and erase block lifespans and to manageoverall system performance.

In one embodiment, the storage system 124 may utilize mirroring and/orerasure coding schemes as part of storing data into addressable fastwrite storage and/or as part of writing data into allocation unitsassociated with erase blocks. Erasure codes may be used across storagedevices, as well as within erase blocks or allocation units, or withinand across Flash memory devices on a single storage device, to provideredundancy against single or multiple storage device failures or toprotect against internal corruptions of Flash memory pages resultingfrom Flash memory operations or from degradation of Flash memory cells.Mirroring and erasure coding at various levels may be used to recoverfrom multiple types of failures that occur separately or in combination.

The embodiments depicted with reference to FIGS. 2A-G illustrate astorage cluster that stores user data, such as user data originatingfrom one or more user or client systems or other sources external to thestorage cluster. The storage cluster distributes user data acrossstorage nodes housed within a chassis, or across multiple chassis, usingerasure coding and redundant copies of metadata. Erasure coding refersto a method of data protection or reconstruction in which data is storedacross a set of different locations, such as disks, storage nodes orgeographic locations. Flash memory is one type of solid-state memorythat may be integrated with the embodiments, although the embodimentsmay be extended to other types of solid-state memory or other storagemedium, including non-solid state memory. Control of storage locationsand workloads are distributed across the storage locations in aclustered peer-to-peer system. Tasks such as mediating communicationsbetween the various storage nodes, detecting when a storage node hasbecome unavailable, and balancing I/Os (inputs and outputs) across thevarious storage nodes, are all handled on a distributed basis. Data islaid out or distributed across multiple storage nodes in data fragmentsor stripes that support data recovery in some embodiments. Ownership ofdata can be reassigned within a cluster, independent of input and outputpatterns. This architecture described in more detail below allows astorage node in the cluster to fail, with the system remainingoperational, since the data can be reconstructed from other storagenodes and thus remain available for input and output operations. Invarious embodiments, a storage node may be referred to as a clusternode, a blade, or a server.

The storage cluster may be contained within a chassis, i.e., anenclosure housing one or more storage nodes. A mechanism to providepower to each storage node, such as a power distribution bus, and acommunication mechanism, such as a communication bus that enablescommunication between the storage nodes are included within the chassis.The storage cluster can run as an independent system in one locationaccording to some embodiments. In one embodiment, a chassis contains atleast two instances of both the power distribution and the communicationbus which may be enabled or disabled independently. The internalcommunication bus may be an Ethernet bus, however, other technologiessuch as PCIe, InfiniBand, and others, are equally suitable. The chassisprovides a port for an external communication bus for enablingcommunication between multiple chassis, directly or through a switch,and with client systems. The external communication may use a technologysuch as Ethernet, InfiniBand, Fibre Channel, etc. In some embodiments,the external communication bus uses different communication bustechnologies for inter-chassis and client communication. If a switch isdeployed within or between chassis, the switch may act as a translationbetween multiple protocols or technologies. When multiple chassis areconnected to define a storage cluster, the storage cluster may beaccessed by a client using either proprietary interfaces or standardinterfaces such as network file system (‘NFS’), common internet filesystem (‘CIFS’), small computer system interface (‘SCSI’) or hypertexttransfer protocol (‘HTTP’). Translation from the client protocol mayoccur at the switch, chassis external communication bus or within eachstorage node. In some embodiments, multiple chassis may be coupled orconnected to each other through an aggregator switch. A portion and/orall of the coupled or connected chassis may be designated as a storagecluster. As discussed above, each chassis can have multiple blades, eachblade has a media access control (‘MAC’) address, but the storagecluster is presented to an external network as having a single clusterIP address and a single MAC address in some embodiments.

Each storage node may be one or more storage servers and each storageserver is connected to one or more non-volatile solid state memoryunits, which may be referred to as storage units or storage devices. Oneembodiment includes a single storage server in each storage node andbetween one to eight non-volatile solid state memory units, however thisone example is not meant to be limiting. The storage server may includea processor, DRAM and interfaces for the internal communication bus andpower distribution for each of the power buses. Inside the storage node,the interfaces and storage unit share a communication bus, e.g., PCIExpress, in some embodiments. The non-volatile solid state memory unitsmay directly access the internal communication bus interface through astorage node communication bus, or request the storage node to accessthe bus interface. The non-volatile solid state memory unit contains anembedded CPU, solid state storage controller, and a quantity of solidstate mass storage, e.g., between 2-32 terabytes (‘TB’) in someembodiments. An embedded volatile storage medium, such as DRAM, and anenergy reserve apparatus are included in the non-volatile solid statememory unit. In some embodiments, the energy reserve apparatus is acapacitor, super-capacitor, or battery that enables transferring asubset of DRAM contents to a stable storage medium in the case of powerloss. In some embodiments, the non-volatile solid state memory unit isconstructed with a storage class memory, such as phase change ormagnetoresistive random access memory (‘MRAM’) that substitutes for DRAMand enables a reduced power hold-up apparatus.

One of many features of the storage nodes and non-volatile solid statestorage is the ability to proactively rebuild data in a storage cluster.The storage nodes and non-volatile solid state storage can determinewhen a storage node or non-volatile solid state storage in the storagecluster is unreachable, independent of whether there is an attempt toread data involving that storage node or non-volatile solid statestorage. The storage nodes and non-volatile solid state storage thencooperate to recover and rebuild the data in at least partially newlocations. This constitutes a proactive rebuild, in that the systemrebuilds data without waiting until the data is needed for a read accessinitiated from a client system employing the storage cluster. These andfurther details of the storage memory and operation thereof arediscussed below.

FIG. 2A is a perspective view of a storage cluster 161, with multiplestorage nodes 150 and internal solid-state memory coupled to eachstorage node to provide network attached storage or storage areanetwork, in accordance with some embodiments. A network attachedstorage, storage area network, or a storage cluster, or other storagememory, could include one or more storage clusters 161, each having oneor more storage nodes 150, in a flexible and reconfigurable arrangementof both the physical components and the amount of storage memoryprovided thereby. The storage cluster 161 is designed to fit in a rack,and one or more racks can be set up and populated as desired for thestorage memory. The storage cluster 161 has a chassis 138 havingmultiple slots 142. It should be appreciated that chassis 138 may bereferred to as a housing, enclosure, or rack unit. In one embodiment,the chassis 138 has fourteen slots 142, although other numbers of slotsare readily devised. For example, some embodiments have four slots,eight slots, sixteen slots, thirty-two slots, or other suitable numberof slots. Each slot 142 can accommodate one storage node 150 in someembodiments. Chassis 138 includes flaps 148 that can be utilized tomount the chassis 138 on a rack. Fans 144 provide air circulation forcooling of the storage nodes 150 and components thereof, although othercooling components could be used, or an embodiment could be devisedwithout cooling components. A switch fabric 146 couples storage nodes150 within chassis 138 together and to a network for communication tothe memory. In an embodiment depicted in herein, the slots 142 to theleft of the switch fabric 146 and fans 144 are shown occupied by storagenodes 150, while the slots 142 to the right of the switch fabric 146 andfans 144 are empty and available for insertion of storage node 150 forillustrative purposes. This configuration is one example, and one ormore storage nodes 150 could occupy the slots 142 in various furtherarrangements. The storage node arrangements need not be sequential oradjacent in some embodiments. Storage nodes 150 are hot pluggable,meaning that a storage node 150 can be inserted into a slot 142 in thechassis 138, or removed from a slot 142, without stopping or poweringdown the system. Upon insertion or removal of storage node 150 from slot142, the system automatically reconfigures in order to recognize andadapt to the change. Reconfiguration, in some embodiments, includesrestoring redundancy and/or rebalancing data or load.

Each storage node 150 can have multiple components. In the embodimentshown here, the storage node 150 includes a printed circuit board 159populated by a CPU 156, i.e., processor, a memory 154 coupled to the CPU156, and a non-volatile solid state storage 152 coupled to the CPU 156,although other mountings and/or components could be used in furtherembodiments. The memory 154 has instructions which are executed by theCPU 156 and/or data operated on by the CPU 156. As further explainedbelow, the non-volatile solid state storage 152 includes flash or, infurther embodiments, other types of solid-state memory.

Referring to FIG. 2A, storage cluster 161 is scalable, meaning thatstorage capacity with non-uniform storage sizes is readily added, asdescribed above. One or more storage nodes 150 can be plugged into orremoved from each chassis and the storage cluster self-configures insome embodiments. Plug-in storage nodes 150, whether installed in achassis as delivered or later added, can have different sizes. Forexample, in one embodiment a storage node 150 can have any multiple of 4TB, e.g., 8 TB, 12 TB, 16 TB, 32 TB, etc. In further embodiments, astorage node 150 could have any multiple of other storage amounts orcapacities. Storage capacity of each storage node 150 is broadcast, andinfluences decisions of how to stripe the data. For maximum storageefficiency, an embodiment can self-configure as wide as possible in thestripe, subject to a predetermined requirement of continued operationwith loss of up to one, or up to two, non-volatile solid state storageunits 152 or storage nodes 150 within the chassis.

FIG. 2B is a block diagram showing a communications interconnect 173 andpower distribution bus 172 coupling multiple storage nodes 150.Referring back to FIG. 2A, the communications interconnect 173 can beincluded in or implemented with the switch fabric 146 in someembodiments. Where multiple storage clusters 161 occupy a rack, thecommunications interconnect 173 can be included in or implemented with atop of rack switch, in some embodiments. As illustrated in FIG. 2B,storage cluster 161 is enclosed within a single chassis 138. Externalport 176 is coupled to storage nodes 150 through communicationsinterconnect 173, while external port 174 is coupled directly to astorage node. External power port 178 is coupled to power distributionbus 172. Storage nodes 150 may include varying amounts and differingcapacities of non-volatile solid state storage 152 as described withreference to FIG. 2A. In addition, one or more storage nodes 150 may bea compute only storage node as illustrated in FIG. 2B. Authorities 168are implemented on the non-volatile solid state storages 152, forexample as lists or other data structures stored in memory. In someembodiments the authorities are stored within the non-volatile solidstate storage 152 and supported by software executing on a controller orother processor of the non-volatile solid state storage 152. In afurther embodiment, authorities 168 are implemented on the storage nodes150, for example as lists or other data structures stored in the memory154 and supported by software executing on the CPU 156 of the storagenode 150. Authorities 168 control how and where data is stored in thenon-volatile solid state storages 152 in some embodiments. This controlassists in determining which type of erasure coding scheme is applied tothe data, and which storage nodes 150 have which portions of the data.Each authority 168 may be assigned to a non-volatile solid state storage152. Each authority may control a range of inode numbers, segmentnumbers, or other data identifiers which are assigned to data by a filesystem, by the storage nodes 150, or by the non-volatile solid statestorage 152, in various embodiments.

Every piece of data, and every piece of metadata, has redundancy in thesystem in some embodiments. In addition, every piece of data and everypiece of metadata has an owner, which may be referred to as anauthority. If that authority is unreachable, for example through failureof a storage node, there is a plan of succession for how to find thatdata or that metadata. In various embodiments, there are redundantcopies of authorities 168. Authorities 168 have a relationship tostorage nodes 150 and non-volatile solid state storage 152 in someembodiments. Each authority 168, covering a range of data segmentnumbers or other identifiers of the data, may be assigned to a specificnon-volatile solid state storage 152. In some embodiments theauthorities 168 for all of such ranges are distributed over thenon-volatile solid state storages 152 of a storage cluster. Each storagenode 150 has a network port that provides access to the non-volatilesolid state storage(s) 152 of that storage node 150. Data can be storedin a segment, which is associated with a segment number and that segmentnumber is an indirection for a configuration of a RAID (redundant arrayof independent disks) stripe in some embodiments. The assignment and useof the authorities 168 thus establishes an indirection to data.Indirection may be referred to as the ability to reference dataindirectly, in this case via an authority 168, in accordance with someembodiments. A segment identifies a set of non-volatile solid statestorage 152 and a local identifier into the set of non-volatile solidstate storage 152 that may contain data. In some embodiments, the localidentifier is an offset into the device and may be reused sequentiallyby multiple segments. In other embodiments the local identifier isunique for a specific segment and never reused. The offsets in thenon-volatile solid state storage 152 are applied to locating data forwriting to or reading from the non-volatile solid state storage 152 (inthe form of a RAID stripe). Data is striped across multiple units ofnon-volatile solid state storage 152, which may include or be differentfrom the non-volatile solid state storage 152 having the authority 168for a particular data segment.

If there is a change in where a particular segment of data is located,e.g., during a data move or a data reconstruction, the authority 168 forthat data segment should be consulted, at that non-volatile solid statestorage 152 or storage node 150 having that authority 168. In order tolocate a particular piece of data, embodiments calculate a hash valuefor a data segment or apply an inode number or a data segment number.The output of this operation points to a non-volatile solid statestorage 152 having the authority 168 for that particular piece of data.In some embodiments there are two stages to this operation. The firststage maps an entity identifier (ID), e.g., a segment number, inodenumber, or directory number to an authority identifier. This mapping mayinclude a calculation such as a hash or a bit mask. The second stage ismapping the authority identifier to a particular non-volatile solidstate storage 152, which may be done through an explicit mapping. Theoperation is repeatable, so that when the calculation is performed, theresult of the calculation repeatably and reliably points to a particularnon-volatile solid state storage 152 having that authority 168. Theoperation may include the set of reachable storage nodes as input. Ifthe set of reachable non-volatile solid state storage units changes theoptimal set changes. In some embodiments, the persisted value is thecurrent assignment (which is always true) and the calculated value isthe target assignment the cluster will attempt to reconfigure towards.This calculation may be used to determine the optimal non-volatile solidstate storage 152 for an authority in the presence of a set ofnon-volatile solid state storage 152 that are reachable and constitutethe same cluster. The calculation also determines an ordered set of peernon-volatile solid state storage 152 that will also record the authorityto non-volatile solid state storage mapping so that the authority may bedetermined even if the assigned non-volatile solid state storage isunreachable. A duplicate or substitute authority 168 may be consulted ifa specific authority 168 is unavailable in some embodiments.

With reference to FIGS. 2A and 2B, two of the many tasks of the CPU 156on a storage node 150 are to break up write data, and reassemble readdata. When the system has determined that data is to be written, theauthority 168 for that data is located as above. When the segment ID fordata is already determined the request to write is forwarded to thenon-volatile solid state storage 152 currently determined to be the hostof the authority 168 determined from the segment. The host CPU 156 ofthe storage node 150, on which the non-volatile solid state storage 152and corresponding authority 168 reside, then breaks up or shards thedata and transmits the data out to various non-volatile solid statestorage 152. The transmitted data is written as a data stripe inaccordance with an erasure coding scheme. In some embodiments, data isrequested to be pulled, and in other embodiments, data is pushed. Inreverse, when data is read, the authority 168 for the segment IDcontaining the data is located as described above. The host CPU 156 ofthe storage node 150 on which the non-volatile solid state storage 152and corresponding authority 168 reside requests the data from thenon-volatile solid state storage and corresponding storage nodes pointedto by the authority. In some embodiments the data is read from flashstorage as a data stripe. The host CPU 156 of storage node 150 thenreassembles the read data, correcting any errors (if present) accordingto the appropriate erasure coding scheme, and forwards the reassembleddata to the network. In further embodiments, some or all of these taskscan be handled in the non-volatile solid state storage 152. In someembodiments, the segment host requests the data be sent to storage node150 by requesting pages from storage and then sending the data to thestorage node making the original request.

In some systems, for example in UNIX-style file systems, data is handledwith an index node or inode, which specifies a data structure thatrepresents an object in a file system. The object could be a file or adirectory, for example. Metadata may accompany the object, as attributessuch as permission data and a creation timestamp, among otherattributes. A segment number could be assigned to all or a portion ofsuch an object in a file system. In other systems, data segments arehandled with a segment number assigned elsewhere. For purposes ofdiscussion, the unit of distribution is an entity, and an entity can bea file, a directory or a segment. That is, entities are units of data ormetadata stored by a storage system. Entities are grouped into setscalled authorities. Each authority has an authority owner, which is astorage node that has the exclusive right to update the entities in theauthority. In other words, a storage node contains the authority, andthat the authority, in turn, contains entities.

A segment is a logical container of data in accordance with someembodiments. A segment is an address space between medium address spaceand physical flash locations, i.e., the data segment number, are in thisaddress space. Segments may also contain meta-data, which enable dataredundancy to be restored (rewritten to different flash locations ordevices) without the involvement of higher level software. In oneembodiment, an internal format of a segment contains client data andmedium mappings to determine the position of that data. Each datasegment is protected, e.g., from memory and other failures, by breakingthe segment into a number of data and parity shards, where applicable.The data and parity shards are distributed, i.e., striped, acrossnon-volatile solid state storage 152 coupled to the host CPUs 156 (SeeFIGS. 2E and 2G) in accordance with an erasure coding scheme. Usage ofthe term segments refers to the container and its place in the addressspace of segments in some embodiments. Usage of the term stripe refersto the same set of shards as a segment and includes how the shards aredistributed along with redundancy or parity information in accordancewith some embodiments.

A series of address-space transformations takes place across an entirestorage system. At the top are the directory entries (file names) whichlink to an inode. Modes point into medium address space, where data islogically stored. Medium addresses may be mapped through a series ofindirect mediums to spread the load of large files, or implement dataservices like deduplication or snapshots. Medium addresses may be mappedthrough a series of indirect mediums to spread the load of large files,or implement data services like deduplication or snapshots. Segmentaddresses are then translated into physical flash locations. Physicalflash locations have an address range bounded by the amount of flash inthe system in accordance with some embodiments. Medium addresses andsegment addresses are logical containers, and in some embodiments use a128 bit or larger identifier so as to be practically infinite, with alikelihood of reuse calculated as longer than the expected life of thesystem. Addresses from logical containers are allocated in ahierarchical fashion in some embodiments. Initially, each non-volatilesolid state storage unit 152 may be assigned a range of address space.Within this assigned range, the non-volatile solid state storage 152 isable to allocate addresses without synchronization with othernon-volatile solid state storage 152.

Data and metadata is stored by a set of underlying storage layouts thatare optimized for varying workload patterns and storage devices. Theselayouts incorporate multiple redundancy schemes, compression formats andindex algorithms. Some of these layouts store information aboutauthorities and authority masters, while others store file metadata andfile data. The redundancy schemes include error correction codes thattolerate corrupted bits within a single storage device (such as a NANDflash chip), erasure codes that tolerate the failure of multiple storagenodes, and replication schemes that tolerate data center or regionalfailures. In some embodiments, low density parity check (‘LDPC’) code isused within a single storage unit. Reed-Solomon encoding is used withina storage cluster, and mirroring is used within a storage grid in someembodiments. Metadata may be stored using an ordered log structuredindex (such as a Log Structured Merge Tree), and large data may not bestored in a log structured layout.

In order to maintain consistency across multiple copies of an entity,the storage nodes agree implicitly on two things through calculations:(1) the authority that contains the entity, and (2) the storage nodethat contains the authority. The assignment of entities to authoritiescan be done by pseudo randomly assigning entities to authorities, bysplitting entities into ranges based upon an externally produced key, orby placing a single entity into each authority. Examples of pseudorandomschemes are linear hashing and the Replication Under Scalable Hashing(‘RUSH’) family of hashes, including Controlled Replication UnderScalable Hashing (‘CRUSH’). In some embodiments, pseudo-randomassignment is utilized only for assigning authorities to nodes becausethe set of nodes can change. The set of authorities cannot change so anysubjective function may be applied in these embodiments. Some placementschemes automatically place authorities on storage nodes, while otherplacement schemes rely on an explicit mapping of authorities to storagenodes. In some embodiments, a pseudorandom scheme is utilized to mapfrom each authority to a set of candidate authority owners. Apseudorandom data distribution function related to CRUSH may assignauthorities to storage nodes and create a list of where the authoritiesare assigned. Each storage node has a copy of the pseudorandom datadistribution function, and can arrive at the same calculation fordistributing, and later finding or locating an authority. Each of thepseudorandom schemes requires the reachable set of storage nodes asinput in some embodiments in order to conclude the same target nodes.Once an entity has been placed in an authority, the entity may be storedon physical devices so that no expected failure will lead to unexpecteddata loss. In some embodiments, rebalancing algorithms attempt to storethe copies of all entities within an authority in the same layout and onthe same set of machines.

Examples of expected failures include device failures, stolen machines,datacenter fires, and regional disasters, such as nuclear or geologicalevents. Different failures lead to different levels of acceptable dataloss. In some embodiments, a stolen storage node impacts neither thesecurity nor the reliability of the system, while depending on systemconfiguration, a regional event could lead to no loss of data, a fewseconds or minutes of lost updates, or even complete data loss.

In the embodiments, the placement of data for storage redundancy isindependent of the placement of authorities for data consistency. Insome embodiments, storage nodes that contain authorities do not containany persistent storage. Instead, the storage nodes are connected tonon-volatile solid state storage units that do not contain authorities.The communications interconnect between storage nodes and non-volatilesolid state storage units consists of multiple communicationtechnologies and has non-uniform performance and fault tolerancecharacteristics. In some embodiments, as mentioned above, non-volatilesolid state storage units are connected to storage nodes via PCIexpress, storage nodes are connected together within a single chassisusing Ethernet backplane, and chassis are connected together to form astorage cluster. Storage clusters are connected to clients usingEthernet or fiber channel in some embodiments. If multiple storageclusters are configured into a storage grid, the multiple storageclusters are connected using the Internet or other long-distancenetworking links, such as a “metro scale” link or private link that doesnot traverse the internet.

Authority owners have the exclusive right to modify entities, to migrateentities from one non-volatile solid state storage unit to anothernon-volatile solid state storage unit, and to add and remove copies ofentities. This allows for maintaining the redundancy of the underlyingdata. When an authority owner fails, is going to be decommissioned, oris overloaded, the authority is transferred to a new storage node.Transient failures make it non-trivial to ensure that all non-faultymachines agree upon the new authority location. The ambiguity thatarises due to transient failures can be achieved automatically by aconsensus protocol such as Paxos, hot-warm failover schemes, via manualintervention by a remote system administrator, or by a local hardwareadministrator (such as by physically removing the failed machine fromthe cluster, or pressing a button on the failed machine). In someembodiments, a consensus protocol is used, and failover is automatic. Iftoo many failures or replication events occur in too short a timeperiod, the system goes into a self-preservation mode and haltsreplication and data movement activities until an administratorintervenes in accordance with some embodiments.

As authorities are transferred between storage nodes and authorityowners update entities in their authorities, the system transfersmessages between the storage nodes and non-volatile solid state storageunits. With regard to persistent messages, messages that have differentpurposes are of different types. Depending on the type of the message,the system maintains different ordering and durability guarantees. Asthe persistent messages are being processed, the messages aretemporarily stored in multiple durable and non-durable storage hardwaretechnologies. In some embodiments, messages are stored in RAM, NVRAM andon NAND flash devices, and a variety of protocols are used in order tomake efficient use of each storage medium. Latency-sensitive clientrequests may be persisted in replicated NVRAM, and then later NAND,while background rebalancing operations are persisted directly to NAND.

Persistent messages are persistently stored prior to being transmitted.This allows the system to continue to serve client requests despitefailures and component replacement. Although many hardware componentscontain unique identifiers that are visible to system administrators,manufacturer, hardware supply chain and ongoing monitoring qualitycontrol infrastructure, applications running on top of theinfrastructure address virtualize addresses. These virtualized addressesdo not change over the lifetime of the storage system, regardless ofcomponent failures and replacements. This allows each component of thestorage system to be replaced over time without reconfiguration ordisruptions of client request processing, i.e., the system supportsnon-disruptive upgrades.

In some embodiments, the virtualized addresses are stored withsufficient redundancy. A continuous monitoring system correlateshardware and software status and the hardware identifiers. This allowsdetection and prediction of failures due to faulty components andmanufacturing details. The monitoring system also enables the proactivetransfer of authorities and entities away from impacted devices beforefailure occurs by removing the component from the critical path in someembodiments.

FIG. 2C is a multiple level block diagram, showing contents of a storagenode 150 and contents of a non-volatile solid state storage 152 of thestorage node 150. Data is communicated to and from the storage node 150by a network interface controller (‘NIC’) 202 in some embodiments. Eachstorage node 150 has a CPU 156, and one or more non-volatile solid statestorage 152, as discussed above. Moving down one level in FIG. 2C, eachnon-volatile solid state storage 152 has a relatively fast non-volatilesolid state memory, such as nonvolatile random access memory (‘NVRAM’)204, and flash memory 206. In some embodiments, NVRAM 204 may be acomponent that does not require program/erase cycles (DRAM, MRAM, PCM),and can be a memory that can support being written vastly more oftenthan the memory is read from. Moving down another level in FIG. 2C, theNVRAM 204 is implemented in one embodiment as high speed volatilememory, such as dynamic random access memory (DRAM) 216, backed up byenergy reserve 218. Energy reserve 218 provides sufficient electricalpower to keep the DRAM 216 powered long enough for contents to betransferred to the flash memory 206 in the event of power failure. Insome embodiments, energy reserve 218 is a capacitor, super-capacitor,battery, or other device, that supplies a suitable supply of energysufficient to enable the transfer of the contents of DRAM 216 to astable storage medium in the case of power loss. The flash memory 206 isimplemented as multiple flash dies 222, which may be referred to aspackages of flash dies 222 or an array of flash dies 222. It should beappreciated that the flash dies 222 could be packaged in any number ofways, with a single die per package, multiple dies per package (i.e.multichip packages), in hybrid packages, as bare dies on a printedcircuit board or other substrate, as encapsulated dies, etc. In theembodiment shown, the non-volatile solid state storage 152 has acontroller 212 or other processor, and an input output (I/O) port 210coupled to the controller 212. I/O port 210 is coupled to the CPU 156and/or the network interface controller 202 of the flash storage node150. Flash input output (I/O) port 220 is coupled to the flash dies 222,and a direct memory access unit (DMA) 214 is coupled to the controller212, the DRAM 216 and the flash dies 222. In the embodiment shown, theI/O port 210, controller 212, DMA unit 214 and flash I/O port 220 areimplemented on a programmable logic device (‘PLD’) 208, e.g., a fieldprogrammable gate array (FPGA). In this embodiment, each flash die 222has pages, organized as sixteen kB (kilobyte) pages 224, and a register226 through which data can be written to or read from the flash die 222.In further embodiments, other types of solid-state memory are used inplace of, or in addition to flash memory illustrated within flash die222.

Storage clusters 161, in various embodiments as disclosed herein, can becontrasted with storage arrays in general. The storage nodes 150 arepart of a collection that creates the storage cluster 161. Each storagenode 150 owns a slice of data and computing required to provide thedata. Multiple storage nodes 150 cooperate to store and retrieve thedata. Storage memory or storage devices, as used in storage arrays ingeneral, are less involved with processing and manipulating the data.Storage memory or storage devices in a storage array receive commands toread, write, or erase data. The storage memory or storage devices in astorage array are not aware of a larger system in which they areembedded, or what the data means. Storage memory or storage devices instorage arrays can include various types of storage memory, such as RAM,solid state drives, hard disk drives, etc. The storage units 152described herein have multiple interfaces active simultaneously andserving multiple purposes. In some embodiments, some of thefunctionality of a storage node 150 is shifted into a storage unit 152,transforming the storage unit 152 into a combination of storage unit 152and storage node 150. Placing computing (relative to storage data) intothe storage unit 152 places this computing closer to the data itself.The various system embodiments have a hierarchy of storage node layerswith different capabilities. By contrast, in a storage array, acontroller owns and knows everything about all of the data that thecontroller manages in a shelf or storage devices. In a storage cluster161, as described herein, multiple controllers in multiple storage units152 and/or storage nodes 150 cooperate in various ways (e.g., forerasure coding, data sharding, metadata communication and redundancy,storage capacity expansion or contraction, data recovery, and so on).

FIG. 2D shows a storage server environment, which uses embodiments ofthe storage nodes 150 and storage units 152 of FIGS. 2A-C. In thisversion, each storage unit 152 has a processor such as controller 212(see FIG. 2C), an FPGA (field programmable gate array), flash memory206, and NVRAM 204 (which is super-capacitor backed DRAM 216, see FIGS.2B and 2C) on a PCIe (peripheral component interconnect express) boardin a chassis 138 (see FIG. 2A). The storage unit 152 may be implementedas a single board containing storage, and may be the largest tolerablefailure domain inside the chassis. In some embodiments, up to twostorage units 152 may fail and the device will continue with no dataloss.

The physical storage is divided into named regions based on applicationusage in some embodiments. The NVRAM 204 is a contiguous block ofreserved memory in the storage unit 152 DRAM 216, and is backed by NANDflash. NVRAM 204 is logically divided into multiple memory regionswritten for two as spool (e.g., spool_region). Space within the NVRAM204 spools is managed by each authority 168 independently. Each deviceprovides an amount of storage space to each authority 168. Thatauthority 168 further manages lifetimes and allocations within thatspace. Examples of a spool include distributed transactions or notions.When the primary power to a storage unit 152 fails, onboardsuper-capacitors provide a short duration of power hold up. During thisholdup interval, the contents of the NVRAM 204 are flushed to flashmemory 206. On the next power-on, the contents of the NVRAM 204 arerecovered from the flash memory 206.

As for the storage unit controller, the responsibility of the logical“controller” is distributed across each of the blades containingauthorities 168. This distribution of logical control is shown in FIG.2D as a host controller 242, mid-tier controller 244 and storage unitcontroller(s) 246. Management of the control plane and the storage planeare treated independently, although parts may be physically co-locatedon the same blade. Each authority 168 effectively serves as anindependent controller. Each authority 168 provides its own data andmetadata structures, its own background workers, and maintains its ownlifecycle.

FIG. 2E is a blade 252 hardware block diagram, showing a control plane254, compute and storage planes 256, 258, and authorities 168interacting with underlying physical resources, using embodiments of thestorage nodes 150 and storage units 152 of FIGS. 2A-C in the storageserver environment of FIG. 2D. The control plane 254 is partitioned intoa number of authorities 168 which can use the compute resources in thecompute plane 256 to run on any of the blades 252. The storage plane 258is partitioned into a set of devices, each of which provides access toflash 206 and NVRAM 204 resources.

In the compute and storage planes 256, 258 of FIG. 2E, the authorities168 interact with the underlying physical resources (i.e., devices).From the point of view of an authority 168, its resources are stripedover all of the physical devices. From the point of view of a device, itprovides resources to all authorities 168, irrespective of where theauthorities happen to run. Each authority 168 has allocated or has beenallocated one or more partitions 260 of storage memory in the storageunits 152, e.g. partitions 260 in flash memory 206 and NVRAM 204. Eachauthority 168 uses those allocated partitions 260 that belong to it, forwriting or reading user data. Authorities can be associated withdiffering amounts of physical storage of the system. For example, oneauthority 168 could have a larger number of partitions 260 or largersized partitions 260 in one or more storage units 152 than one or moreother authorities 168.

FIG. 2F depicts elasticity software layers in blades 252 of a storagecluster, in accordance with some embodiments. In the elasticitystructure, elasticity software is symmetric, i.e., each blade's computemodule 270 runs the three identical layers of processes depicted in FIG.2F. Storage managers 274 execute read and write requests from otherblades 252 for data and metadata stored in local storage unit 152 NVRAM204 and flash 206. Authorities 168 fulfill client requests by issuingthe necessary reads and writes to the blades 252 on whose storage units152 the corresponding data or metadata resides. Endpoints 272 parseclient connection requests received from switch fabric 146 supervisorysoftware, relay the client connection requests to the authorities 168responsible for fulfillment, and relay the authorities' 168 responses toclients. The symmetric three-layer structure enables the storagesystem's high degree of concurrency. Elasticity scales out efficientlyand reliably in these embodiments. In addition, elasticity implements aunique scale-out technique that balances work evenly across allresources regardless of client access pattern, and maximizes concurrencyby eliminating much of the need for inter-blade coordination thattypically occurs with conventional distributed locking.

Still referring to FIG. 2F, authorities 168 running in the computemodules 270 of a blade 252 perform the internal operations required tofulfill client requests. One feature of elasticity is that authorities168 are stateless, i.e., they cache active data and metadata in theirown blades' 252 DRAMs for fast access, but the authorities store everyupdate in their NVRAM 204 partitions on three separate blades 252 untilthe update has been written to flash 206. All the storage system writesto NVRAM 204 are in triplicate to partitions on three separate blades252 in some embodiments. With triple-mirrored NVRAM 204 and persistentstorage protected by parity and Reed-Solomon RAID checksums, the storagesystem can survive concurrent failure of two blades 252 with no loss ofdata, metadata, or access to either.

Because authorities 168 are stateless, they can migrate between blades252. Each authority 168 has a unique identifier. NVRAM 204 and flash 206partitions are associated with authorities' 168 identifiers, not withthe blades 252 on which they are running in some. Thus, when anauthority 168 migrates, the authority 168 continues to manage the samestorage partitions from its new location. When a new blade 252 isinstalled in an embodiment of the storage cluster, the systemautomatically rebalances load by: partitioning the new blade's 252storage for use by the system's authorities 168, migrating selectedauthorities 168 to the new blade 252, starting endpoints 272 on the newblade 252 and including them in the switch fabric's 146 clientconnection distribution algorithm.

From their new locations, migrated authorities 168 persist the contentsof their NVRAM 204 partitions on flash 206, process read and writerequests from other authorities 168, and fulfill the client requeststhat endpoints 272 direct to them. Similarly, if a blade 252 fails or isremoved, the system redistributes its authorities 168 among the system'sremaining blades 252. The redistributed authorities 168 continue toperform their original functions from their new locations.

FIG. 2G depicts authorities 168 and storage resources in blades 252 of astorage cluster, in accordance with some embodiments. Each authority 168is exclusively responsible for a partition of the flash 206 and NVRAM204 on each blade 252. The authority 168 manages the content andintegrity of its partitions independently of other authorities 168.Authorities 168 compress incoming data and preserve it temporarily intheir NVRAM 204 partitions, and then consolidate, RAID-protect, andpersist the data in segments of the storage in their flash 206partitions. As the authorities 168 write data to flash 206, storagemanagers 274 perform the necessary flash translation to optimize writeperformance and maximize media longevity. In the background, authorities168 “garbage collect,” or reclaim space occupied by data that clientshave made obsolete by overwriting the data. It should be appreciatedthat since authorities' 168 partitions are disjoint, there is no needfor distributed locking to execute client and writes or to performbackground functions.

The embodiments described herein may utilize various software,communication and/or networking protocols. In addition, theconfiguration of the hardware and/or software may be adjusted toaccommodate various protocols. For example, the embodiments may utilizeActive Directory, which is a database based system that providesauthentication, directory, policy, and other services in a WINDOWS'environment. In these embodiments, LDAP (Lightweight Directory AccessProtocol) is one example application protocol for querying and modifyingitems in directory service providers such as Active Directory. In someembodiments, a network lock manager (‘NLM’) is utilized as a facilitythat works in cooperation with the Network File System (‘NFS’) toprovide a System V style of advisory file and record locking over anetwork. The Server Message Block (‘SMB’) protocol, one version of whichis also known as Common Internet File System (‘CIFS’), may be integratedwith the storage systems discussed herein. SMP operates as anapplication-layer network protocol typically used for providing sharedaccess to files, printers, and serial ports and miscellaneouscommunications between nodes on a network. SMB also provides anauthenticated inter-process communication mechanism. AMAZON™ S3 (SimpleStorage Service) is a web service offered by Amazon Web Services, andthe systems described herein may interface with Amazon S3 through webservices interfaces (REST (representational state transfer), SOAP(simple object access protocol), and BitTorrent). A RESTful API(application programming interface) breaks down a transaction to createa series of small modules. Each module addresses a particular underlyingpart of the transaction. The control or permissions provided with theseembodiments, especially for object data, may include utilization of anaccess control list (‘ACL’). The ACL is a list of permissions attachedto an object and the ACL specifies which users or system processes aregranted access to objects, as well as what operations are allowed ongiven objects. The systems may utilize Internet Protocol version 6(‘IPv6’), as well as IPv4, for the communications protocol that providesan identification and location system for computers on networks androutes traffic across the Internet. The routing of packets betweennetworked systems may include Equal-cost multi-path routing (‘ECMP’),which is a routing strategy where next-hop packet forwarding to a singledestination can occur over multiple “best paths” which tie for top placein routing metric calculations. Multi-path routing can be used inconjunction with most routing protocols, because it is a per-hopdecision limited to a single router. The software may supportMulti-tenancy, which is an architecture in which a single instance of asoftware application serves multiple customers. Each customer may bereferred to as a tenant. Tenants may be given the ability to customizesome parts of the application, but may not customize the application'scode, in some embodiments. The embodiments may maintain audit logs. Anaudit log is a document that records an event in a computing system. Inaddition to documenting what resources were accessed, audit log entriestypically include destination and source addresses, a timestamp, anduser login information for compliance with various regulations. Theembodiments may support various key management policies, such asencryption key rotation. In addition, the system may support dynamicroot passwords or some variation dynamically changing passwords.

FIG. 3A sets forth a diagram of a storage system 306 that is coupled fordata communications with a cloud services provider 302 in accordancewith some embodiments of the present disclosure. Although depicted inless detail, the storage system 306 depicted in FIG. 3A may be similarto the storage systems described above with reference to FIGS. 1A-1D andFIGS. 2A-2G. In some embodiments, the storage system 306 depicted inFIG. 3A may be embodied as a storage system that includes imbalancedactive/active controllers, as a storage system that includes balancedactive/active controllers, as a storage system that includesactive/active controllers where less than all of each controller'sresources are utilized such that each controller has reserve resourcesthat may be used to support failover, as a storage system that includesfully active/active controllers, as a storage system that includesdataset-segregated controllers, as a storage system that includesdual-layer architectures with front-end controllers and back-endintegrated storage controllers, as a storage system that includesscale-out clusters of dual-controller arrays, as well as combinations ofsuch embodiments.

In the example depicted in FIG. 3A, the storage system 306 is coupled tothe cloud services provider 302 via a data communications link 304. Thedata communications link 304 may be embodied as a dedicated datacommunications link, as a data communications pathway that is providedthrough the use of one or data communications networks such as a widearea network (‘WAN’) or local area network (‘LAN’), or as some othermechanism capable of transporting digital information between thestorage system 306 and the cloud services provider 302. Such a datacommunications link 304 may be fully wired, fully wireless, or someaggregation of wired and wireless data communications pathways. In suchan example, digital information may be exchanged between the storagesystem 306 and the cloud services provider 302 via the datacommunications link 304 using one or more data communications protocols.For example, digital information may be exchanged between the storagesystem 306 and the cloud services provider 302 via the datacommunications link 304 using the handheld device transfer protocol(‘HDTP’), hypertext transfer protocol (‘HTTP’), internet protocol(‘IP’), real-time transfer protocol (‘RTP’), transmission controlprotocol (‘TCP’), user datagram protocol (‘UDP’), wireless applicationprotocol (‘WAP’), or other protocol.

The cloud services provider 302 depicted in FIG. 3A may be embodied, forexample, as a system and computing environment that provides services tousers of the cloud services provider 302 through the sharing ofcomputing resources via the data communications link 304. The cloudservices provider 302 may provide on-demand access to a shared pool ofconfigurable computing resources such as computer networks, servers,storage, applications and services, and so on. The shared pool ofconfigurable resources may be rapidly provisioned and released to a userof the cloud services provider 302 with minimal management effort.Generally, the user of the cloud services provider 302 is unaware of theexact computing resources utilized by the cloud services provider 302 toprovide the services. Although in many cases such a cloud servicesprovider 302 may be accessible via the Internet, readers of skill in theart will recognize that any system that abstracts the use of sharedresources to provide services to a user through any data communicationslink may be considered a cloud services provider 302.

In the example depicted in FIG. 3A, the cloud services provider 302 maybe configured to provide a variety of services to the storage system 306and users of the storage system 306 through the implementation ofvarious service models. For example, the cloud services provider 302 maybe configured to provide services to the storage system 306 and users ofthe storage system 306 through the implementation of an infrastructureas a service (‘IaaS’) service model where the cloud services provider302 offers computing infrastructure such as virtual machines and otherresources as a service to subscribers. In addition, the cloud servicesprovider 302 may be configured to provide services to the storage system306 and users of the storage system 306 through the implementation of aplatform as a service (‘PaaS’) service model where the cloud servicesprovider 302 offers a development environment to application developers.Such a development environment may include, for example, an operatingsystem, programming-language execution environment, database, webserver, or other components that may be utilized by applicationdevelopers to develop and run software solutions on a cloud platform.Furthermore, the cloud services provider 302 may be configured toprovide services to the storage system 306 and users of the storagesystem 306 through the implementation of a software as a service(‘SaaS’) service model where the cloud services provider 302 offersapplication software, databases, as well as the platforms that are usedto run the applications to the storage system 306 and users of thestorage system 306, providing the storage system 306 and users of thestorage system 306 with on-demand software and eliminating the need toinstall and run the application on local computers, which may simplifymaintenance and support of the application. The cloud services provider302 may be further configured to provide services to the storage system306 and users of the storage system 306 through the implementation of anauthentication as a service (‘AaaS’) service model where the cloudservices provider 302 offers authentication services that can be used tosecure access to applications, data sources, or other resources. Thecloud services provider 302 may also be configured to provide servicesto the storage system 306 and users of the storage system 306 throughthe implementation of a storage as a service model where the cloudservices provider 302 offers access to its storage infrastructure foruse by the storage system 306 and users of the storage system 306.Readers will appreciate that the cloud services provider 302 may beconfigured to provide additional services to the storage system 306 andusers of the storage system 306 through the implementation of additionalservice models, as the service models described above are included onlyfor explanatory purposes and in no way represent a limitation of theservices that may be offered by the cloud services provider 302 or alimitation as to the service models that may be implemented by the cloudservices provider 302.

In the example depicted in FIG. 3A, the cloud services provider 302 maybe embodied, for example, as a private cloud, as a public cloud, or as acombination of a private cloud and public cloud. In an embodiment inwhich the cloud services provider 302 is embodied as a private cloud,the cloud services provider 302 may be dedicated to providing servicesto a single organization rather than providing services to multipleorganizations. In an embodiment where the cloud services provider 302 isembodied as a public cloud, the cloud services provider 302 may provideservices to multiple organizations. Public cloud and private clouddeployment models may differ and may come with various advantages anddisadvantages. For example, because a public cloud deployment involvesthe sharing of a computing infrastructure across different organization,such a deployment may not be ideal for organizations with securityconcerns, mission-critical workloads, uptime requirements demands, andso on. While a private cloud deployment can address some of theseissues, a private cloud deployment may require on-premises staff tomanage the private cloud. In still alternative embodiments, the cloudservices provider 302 may be embodied as a mix of a private and publiccloud services with a hybrid cloud deployment.

Although not explicitly depicted in FIG. 3A, readers will appreciatethat additional hardware components and additional software componentsmay be necessary to facilitate the delivery of cloud services to thestorage system 306 and users of the storage system 306. For example, thestorage system 306 may be coupled to (or even include) a cloud storagegateway. Such a cloud storage gateway may be embodied, for example, ashardware-based or software-based appliance that is located on premisewith the storage system 306. Such a cloud storage gateway may operate asa bridge between local applications that are executing on the storagearray 306 and remote, cloud-based storage that is utilized by thestorage array 306. Through the use of a cloud storage gateway,organizations may move primary iSCSI or NAS to the cloud servicesprovider 302, thereby enabling the organization to save space on theiron-premises storage systems. Such a cloud storage gateway may beconfigured to emulate a disk array, a block-based device, a file server,or other storage system that can translate the SCSI commands, fileserver commands, or other appropriate command into REST-space protocolsthat facilitate communications with the cloud services provider 302.

In order to enable the storage system 306 and users of the storagesystem 306 to make use of the services provided by the cloud servicesprovider 302, a cloud migration process may take place during whichdata, applications, or other elements from an organization's localsystems (or even from another cloud environment) are moved to the cloudservices provider 302. In order to successfully migrate data,applications, or other elements to the cloud services provider's 302environment, middleware such as a cloud migration tool may be utilizedto bridge gaps between the cloud services provider's 302 environment andan organization's environment. Such cloud migration tools may also beconfigured to address potentially high network costs and long transfertimes associated with migrating large volumes of data to the cloudservices provider 302, as well as addressing security concernsassociated with sensitive data to the cloud services provider 302 overdata communications networks. In order to further enable the storagesystem 306 and users of the storage system 306 to make use of theservices provided by the cloud services provider 302, a cloudorchestrator may also be used to arrange and coordinate automated tasksin pursuit of creating a consolidated process or workflow. Such a cloudorchestrator may perform tasks such as configuring various components,whether those components are cloud components or on-premises components,as well as managing the interconnections between such components. Thecloud orchestrator can simplify the inter-component communication andconnections to ensure that links are correctly configured andmaintained.

In the example depicted in FIG. 3A, and as described briefly above, thecloud services provider 302 may be configured to provide services to thestorage system 306 and users of the storage system 306 through the usageof a SaaS service model where the cloud services provider 302 offersapplication software, databases, as well as the platforms that are usedto run the applications to the storage system 306 and users of thestorage system 306, providing the storage system 306 and users of thestorage system 306 with on-demand software and eliminating the need toinstall and run the application on local computers, which may simplifymaintenance and support of the application. Such applications may takemany forms in accordance with various embodiments of the presentdisclosure. For example, the cloud services provider 302 may beconfigured to provide access to data analytics applications to thestorage system 306 and users of the storage system 306. Such dataanalytics applications may be configured, for example, to receivetelemetry data phoned home by the storage system 306. Such telemetrydata may describe various operating characteristics of the storagesystem 306 and may be analyzed, for example, to determine the health ofthe storage system 306, to identify workloads that are executing on thestorage system 306, to predict when the storage system 306 will run outof various resources, to recommend configuration changes, hardware orsoftware upgrades, workflow migrations, or other actions that mayimprove the operation of the storage system 306.

The cloud services provider 302 may also be configured to provide accessto virtualized computing environments to the storage system 306 andusers of the storage system 306. Such virtualized computing environmentsmay be embodied, for example, as a virtual machine or other virtualizedcomputer hardware platforms, virtual storage devices, virtualizedcomputer network resources, and so on. Examples of such virtualizedenvironments can include virtual machines that are created to emulate anactual computer, virtualized desktop environments that separate alogical desktop from a physical machine, virtualized file systems thatallow uniform access to different types of concrete file systems, andmany others.

For further explanation, FIG. 3B sets forth a diagram of a storagesystem 306 in accordance with some embodiments of the presentdisclosure. Although depicted in less detail, the storage system 306depicted in FIG. 3B may be similar to the storage systems describedabove with reference to FIGS. 1A-1D and FIGS. 2A-2G as the storagesystem may include many of the components described above.

The storage system 306 depicted in FIG. 3B may include storage resources308, which may be embodied in many forms. For example, in someembodiments the storage resources 308 can include nano-RAM or anotherform of nonvolatile random access memory that utilizes carbon nanotubesdeposited on a substrate. In some embodiments, the storage resources 308may include 3D crosspoint non-volatile memory in which bit storage isbased on a change of bulk resistance, in conjunction with a stackablecross-gridded data access array. In some embodiments, the storageresources 308 may include flash memory, including single-level cell(‘SLC’) NAND flash, multi-level cell (‘MLC’) NAND flash, triple-levelcell (‘TLC’) NAND flash, quad-level cell (‘QLC’) NAND flash, and others.In some embodiments, the storage resources 308 may include non-volatilemagnetoresistive random-access memory (‘MRAM’), including spin transfertorque (‘STT’) MRAM, in which data is stored through the use of magneticstorage elements. In some embodiments, the example storage resources 308may include non-volatile phase-change memory (‘PCM’) that may have theability to hold multiple bits in a single cell as cells can achieve anumber of distinct intermediary states. In some embodiments, the storageresources 308 may include quantum memory that allows for the storage andretrieval of photonic quantum information. In some embodiments, theexample storage resources 308 may include resistive random-access memory(‘ReRAM’) in which data is stored by changing the resistance across adielectric solid-state material. In some embodiments, the storageresources 308 may include storage class memory (‘SCM’) in whichsolid-state nonvolatile memory may be manufactured at a high densityusing some combination of sub-lithographic patterning techniques,multiple bits per cell, multiple layers of devices, and so on. Readerswill appreciate that other forms of computer memories and storagedevices may be utilized by the storage systems described above,including DRAM, SRAM, EEPROM, universal memory, and many others. Thestorage resources 308 depicted in FIG. 3A may be embodied in a varietyof form factors, including but not limited to, dual in-line memorymodules (‘DIMMs’), non-volatile dual in-line memory modules (‘NVDIMMs’),M.2, U.2, and others.

The example storage system 306 depicted in FIG. 3B may implement avariety of storage architectures. For example, storage systems inaccordance with some embodiments of the present disclosure may utilizeblock storage where data is stored in blocks, and each block essentiallyacts as an individual hard drive. Storage systems in accordance withsome embodiments of the present disclosure may utilize object storage,where data is managed as objects. Each object may include the dataitself, a variable amount of metadata, and a globally unique identifier,where object storage can be implemented at multiple levels (e.g., devicelevel, system level, interface level). Storage systems in accordancewith some embodiments of the present disclosure utilize file storage inwhich data is stored in a hierarchical structure. Such data may be savedin files and folders, and presented to both the system storing it andthe system retrieving it in the same format.

The example storage system 306 depicted in FIG. 3B may be embodied as astorage system in which additional storage resources can be addedthrough the use of a scale-up model, additional storage resources can beadded through the use of a scale-out model, or through some combinationthereof. In a scale-up model, additional storage may be added by addingadditional storage devices. In a scale-out model, however, additionalstorage nodes may be added to a cluster of storage nodes, where suchstorage nodes can include additional processing resources, additionalnetworking resources, and so on.

The storage system 306 depicted in FIG. 3B also includes communicationsresources 310 that may be useful in facilitating data communicationsbetween components within the storage system 306, as well as datacommunications between the storage system 306 and computing devices thatare outside of the storage system 306. The communications resources 310may be configured to utilize a variety of different protocols and datacommunication fabrics to facilitate data communications betweencomponents within the storage systems as well as computing devices thatare outside of the storage system. For example, the communicationsresources 310 can include fibre channel (‘FC’) technologies such as FCfabrics and FC protocols that can transport SCSI commands over FCnetworks. The communications resources 310 can also include FC overethernet (‘FCoE’) technologies through which FC frames are encapsulatedand transmitted over Ethernet networks. The communications resources 310can also include InfiniBand (‘IB’) technologies in which a switchedfabric topology is utilized to facilitate transmissions between channeladapters. The communications resources 310 can also include NVM Express(‘NVMe’) technologies and NVMe over fabrics (‘NVMeoF’) technologiesthrough which non-volatile storage media attached via a PCI express(‘PCIe’) bus may be accessed. The communications resources 310 can alsoinclude mechanisms for accessing storage resources 308 within thestorage system 306 utilizing serial attached SCSI (‘SAS’), serial ATA(‘SATA’) bus interfaces for connecting storage resources 308 within thestorage system 306 to host bus adapters within the storage system 306,internet small computer systems interface (‘iSCSI’) technologies toprovide block-level access to storage resources 308 within the storagesystem 306, and other communications resources that that may be usefulin facilitating data communications between components within thestorage system 306, as well as data communications between the storagesystem 306 and computing devices that are outside of the storage system306.

The storage system 306 depicted in FIG. 3B also includes processingresources 312 that may be useful in useful in executing computer programinstructions and performing other computational tasks within the storagesystem 306. The processing resources 312 may include one or moreapplication-specific integrated circuits (‘ASICs’) that are customizedfor some particular purpose as well as one or more central processingunits (‘CPUs’). The processing resources 312 may also include one ormore digital signal processors (‘DSPs’), one or more field-programmablegate arrays (‘FPGAs’), one or more systems on a chip (‘SoCs’), or otherform of processing resources 312. The storage system 306 may utilize thestorage resources 312 to perform a variety of tasks including, but notlimited to, supporting the execution of software resources 314 that willbe described in greater detail below.

The storage system 306 depicted in FIG. 3B also includes softwareresources 314 that, when executed by processing resources 312 within thestorage system 306, may perform various tasks. The software resources314 may include, for example, one or more modules of computer programinstructions that when executed by processing resources 312 within thestorage system 306 are useful in carrying out various data protectiontechniques to preserve the integrity of data that is stored within thestorage systems. Readers will appreciate that such data protectiontechniques may be carried out, for example, by system software executingon computer hardware within the storage system, by a cloud servicesprovider, or in other ways. Such data protection techniques can include,for example, data archiving techniques that cause data that is no longeractively used to be moved to a separate storage device or separatestorage system for long-term retention, data backup techniques throughwhich data stored in the storage system may be copied and stored in adistinct location to avoid data loss in the event of equipment failureor some other form of catastrophe with the storage system, datareplication techniques through which data stored in the storage systemis replicated to another storage system such that the data may beaccessible via multiple storage systems, data snapshotting techniquesthrough which the state of data within the storage system is captured atvarious points in time, data and database cloning techniques throughwhich duplicate copies of data and databases may be created, and otherdata protection techniques. Through the use of such data protectiontechniques, business continuity and disaster recovery objectives may bemet as a failure of the storage system may not result in the loss ofdata stored in the storage system.

The software resources 314 may also include software that is useful inimplementing software-defined storage (‘SDS’). In such an example, thesoftware resources 314 may include one or more modules of computerprogram instructions that, when executed, are useful in policy-basedprovisioning and management of data storage that is independent of theunderlying hardware. Such software resources 314 may be useful inimplementing storage virtualization to separate the storage hardwarefrom the software that manages the storage hardware.

The software resources 314 may also include software that is useful infacilitating and optimizing I/O operations that are directed to thestorage resources 308 in the storage system 306. For example, thesoftware resources 314 may include software modules that perform carryout various data reduction techniques such as, for example, datacompression, data deduplication, and others. The software resources 314may include software modules that intelligently group together I/Ooperations to facilitate better usage of the underlying storage resource308, software modules that perform data migration operations to migratefrom within a storage system, as well as software modules that performother functions. Such software resources 314 may be embodied as one ormore software containers or in many other ways.

Readers will appreciate that the presence of such software resources 314may provide for an improved user experience of the storage system 306,an expansion of functionality supported by the storage system 306, andmany other benefits. Consider the specific example of the softwareresources 314 carrying out data backup techniques through which datastored in the storage system may be copied and stored in a distinctlocation to avoid data loss in the event of equipment failure or someother form of catastrophe. In such an example, the systems describedherein may more reliably (and with less burden placed on the user)perform backup operations relative to interactive backup managementsystems that require high degrees of user interactivity, offer lessrobust automation and feature sets, and so on.

The storage systems described above may carry out intelligent databackup techniques through which data stored in the storage system may becopied and stored in a distinct location to avoid data loss in the eventof equipment failure or some other form of catastrophe. For example, thestorage systems described above may be configured to examine each backupto avoid restoring the storage system to an undesirable state. Consideran example in which malware infects the storage system. In such anexample, the storage system may include software resources 314 that canscan each backup to identify backups that were captured before themalware infected the storage system and those backups that were capturedafter the malware infected the storage system. In such an example, thestorage system may restore itself from a backup that does not includethe malware—or at least not restore the portions of a backup thatcontained the malware. In such an example, the storage system mayinclude software resources 314 that can scan each backup to identify thepresences of malware (or a virus, or some other undesirable), forexample, by identifying write operations that were serviced by thestorage system and originated from a network subnet that is suspected tohave delivered the malware, by identifying write operations that wereserviced by the storage system and originated from a user that issuspected to have delivered the malware, by identifying write operationsthat were serviced by the storage system and examining the content ofthe write operation against fingerprints of the malware, and in manyother ways.

Readers will further appreciate that the backups (often in the form ofone or more snapshots) may also be utilized to perform rapid recovery ofthe storage system. Consider an example in which the storage system isinfected with ransomware that locks users out of the storage system. Insuch an example, software resources 314 within the storage system may beconfigured to detect the presence of ransomware and may be furtherconfigured to restore the storage system to a point-in-time, using theretained backups, prior to the point-in-time at which the ransomwareinfected the storage system. In such an example, the presence ofransomware may be explicitly detected through the use of software toolsutilized by the system, through the use of a key (e.g., a USB drive)that is inserted into the storage system, or in a similar way. Likewise,the presence of ransomware may be inferred in response to systemactivity meeting a predetermined fingerprint such as, for example, noreads or writes coming into the system for a predetermined period oftime.

Readers will appreciate that the various components depicted in FIG. 3Bmay be grouped into one or more optimized computing packages asconverged infrastructures. Such converged infrastructures may includepools of computers, storage and networking resources that can be sharedby multiple applications and managed in a collective manner usingpolicy-driven processes. Such converged infrastructures may minimizecompatibility issues between various components within the storagesystem 306 while also reducing various costs associated with theestablishment and operation of the storage system 306. Such convergedinfrastructures may be implemented with a converged infrastructurereference architecture, with standalone appliances, with a softwaredriven hyper-converged approach (e.g., hyper-converged infrastructures),or in other ways.

Readers will appreciate that the storage system 306 depicted in FIG. 3Bmay be useful for supporting various types of software applications. Forexample, the storage system 306 may be useful in supporting artificialintelligence (‘AI’) applications, database applications, DevOpsprojects, electronic design automation tools, event-driven softwareapplications, high performance computing applications, simulationapplications, high-speed data capture and analysis applications, machinelearning applications, media production applications, media servingapplications, picture archiving and communication systems (‘PACS’)applications, software development applications, virtual realityapplications, augmented reality applications, and many other types ofapplications by providing storage resources to such applications.

The storage systems described above may operate to support a widevariety of applications. In view of the fact that the storage systemsinclude compute resources, storage resources, and a wide variety ofother resources, the storage systems may be well suited to supportapplications that are resource intensive such as, for example, AIapplications. Such AI applications may enable devices to perceive theirenvironment and take actions that maximize their chance of success atsome goal. Examples of such AI applications can include IBM Watson,Microsoft Oxford, Google DeepMind, Baidu Minwa, and others. The storagesystems described above may also be well suited to support other typesof applications that are resource intensive such as, for example,machine learning applications. Machine learning applications may performvarious types of data analysis to automate analytical model building.Using algorithms that iteratively learn from data, machine learningapplications can enable computers to learn without being explicitlyprogrammed.

In addition to the resources already described, the storage systemsdescribed above may also include graphics processing units (‘GPUs’),occasionally referred to as visual processing unit (‘VPUs’). Such GPUsmay be embodied as specialized electronic circuits that rapidlymanipulate and alter memory to accelerate the creation of images in aframe buffer intended for output to a display device. Such GPUs may beincluded within any of the computing devices that are part of thestorage systems described above, including as one of many individuallyscalable components of a storage system, where other examples ofindividually scalable components of such storage system can includestorage components, memory components, compute components (e.g., CPUs,FPGAs, ASICs), networking components, software components, and others.In addition to GPUs, the storage systems described above may alsoinclude neural network processors (‘NNPs’) for use in various aspects ofneural network processing. Such NNPs may be used in place of (or inaddition to) GPUs and may be also be independently scalable.

As described above, the storage systems described herein may beconfigured to support artificial intelligence applications, machinelearning applications, big data analytics applications, and many othertypes of applications. The rapid growth in these sort of applications isbeing driven by three technologies: deep learning (DL), GPU processors,and Big Data. Deep learning is a computing model that makes use ofmassively parallel neural networks inspired by the human brain. Insteadof experts handcrafting software, a deep learning model writes its ownsoftware by learning from lots of examples. A GPU is a modern processorwith thousands of cores, well-suited to run algorithms that looselyrepresent the parallel nature of the human brain.

Advances in deep neural networks have ignited a new wave of algorithmsand tools for data scientists to tap into their data with artificialintelligence (AI). With improved algorithms, larger data sets, andvarious frameworks (including open-source software libraries for machinelearning across a range of tasks), data scientists are tackling new usecases like autonomous driving vehicles, natural language processing andunderstanding, computer vision, machine reasoning, strong AI, and manyothers. Applications of such techniques may include: machine andvehicular object detection, identification and avoidance; visualrecognition, classification and tagging; algorithmic financial tradingstrategy performance management; simultaneous localization and mapping;predictive maintenance of high-value machinery; prevention against cybersecurity threats, expertise automation; image recognition andclassification; question answering; robotics; text analytics(extraction, classification) and text generation and translation; andmany others. Applications of AI techniques has materialized in a widearray of products include, for example, Amazon Echo's speech recognitiontechnology that allows users to talk to their machines, GoogleTranslate™ which allows for machine-based language translation,Spotify's Discover Weekly that provides recommendations on new songs andartists that a user may like based on the user's usage and trafficanalysis, Quill's text generation offering that takes structured dataand turns it into narrative stories, Chatbots that provide real-time,contextually specific answers to questions in a dialog format, and manyothers. Furthermore, AI may impact a wide variety of industries andsectors. For example, AI solutions may be used in healthcare to takeclinical notes, patient files, research data, and other inputs togenerate potential treatment options for doctors to explore. Likewise,AI solutions may be used by retailers to personalize consumerrecommendations based on a person's digital footprint of behaviors,profile data, or other data.

Training deep neural networks, however, requires both high quality inputdata and large amounts of computation. GPUs are massively parallelprocessors capable of operating on large amounts of data simultaneously.When combined into a multi-GPU cluster, a high throughput pipeline maybe required to feed input data from storage to the compute engines. Deeplearning is more than just constructing and training models. There alsoexists an entire data pipeline that must be designed for the scale,iteration, and experimentation necessary for a data science team tosucceed.

Data is the heart of modern AI and deep learning algorithms. Beforetraining can begin, one problem that must be addressed revolves aroundcollecting the labeled data that is crucial for training an accurate AImodel. A full scale AI deployment may be required to continuouslycollect, clean, transform, label, and store large amounts of data.Adding additional high quality data points directly translates to moreaccurate models and better insights. Data samples may undergo a seriesof processing steps including, but not limited to: 1) ingesting the datafrom an external source into the training system and storing the data inraw form, 2) cleaning and transforming the data in a format convenientfor training, including linking data samples to the appropriate label,3) exploring parameters and models, quickly testing with a smallerdataset, and iterating to converge on the most promising models to pushinto the production cluster, 4) executing training phases to selectrandom batches of input data, including both new and older samples, andfeeding those into production GPU servers for computation to updatemodel parameters, and 5) evaluating including using a holdback portionof the data not used in training in order to evaluate model accuracy onthe holdout data. This lifecycle may apply for any type of parallelizedmachine learning, not just neural networks or deep learning. Forexample, standard machine learning frameworks may rely on CPUs insteadof GPUs but the data ingest and training workflows may be the same.Readers will appreciate that a single shared storage data hub creates acoordination point throughout the lifecycle without the need for extradata copies among the ingest, preprocessing, and training stages. Rarelyis the ingested data used for only one purpose, and shared storage givesthe flexibility to train multiple different models or apply traditionalanalytics to the data.

Readers will appreciate that each stage in the AI data pipeline may havevarying requirements from the data hub (e.g., the storage system orcollection of storage systems). Scale-out storage systems must deliveruncompromising performance for all manner of access types andpatterns—from small, metadata-heavy to large files, from random tosequential access patterns, and from low to high concurrency. Thestorage systems described above may serve as an ideal AI data hub as thesystems may service unstructured workloads. In the first stage, data isideally ingested and stored on to the same data hub that followingstages will use, in order to avoid excess data copying. The next twosteps can be done on a standard compute server that optionally includesa GPU, and then in the fourth and last stage, full training productionjobs are run on powerful GPU-accelerated servers. Often, there is aproduction pipeline alongside an experimental pipeline operating on thesame dataset. Further, the GPU-accelerated servers can be usedindependently for different models or joined together to train on onelarger model, even spanning multiple systems for distributed training.If the shared storage tier is slow, then data must be copied to localstorage for each phase, resulting in wasted time staging data ontodifferent servers. The ideal data hub for the AI training pipelinedelivers performance similar to data stored locally on the server nodewhile also having the simplicity and performance to enable all pipelinestages to operate concurrently.

A data scientist works to improve the usefulness of the trained modelthrough a wide variety of approaches: more data, better data, smartertraining, and deeper models. In many cases, there will be teams of datascientists sharing the same datasets and working in parallel to producenew and improved training models. Often, there is a team of datascientists working within these phases concurrently on the same shareddatasets. Multiple, concurrent workloads of data processing,experimentation, and full-scale training layer the demands of multipleaccess patterns on the storage tier. In other words, storage cannot justsatisfy large file reads, but must contend with a mix of large and smallfile reads and writes. Finally, with multiple data scientists exploringdatasets and models, it may be critical to store data in its nativeformat to provide flexibility for each user to transform, clean, and usethe data in a unique way. The storage systems described above mayprovide a natural shared storage home for the dataset, with dataprotection redundancy (e.g., by using RAID6) and the performancenecessary to be a common access point for multiple developers andmultiple experiments. Using the storage systems described above mayavoid the need to carefully copy subsets of the data for local work,saving both engineering and GPU-accelerated servers use time. Thesecopies become a constant and growing tax as the raw data set and desiredtransformations constantly update and change.

Readers will appreciate that a fundamental reason why deep learning hasseen a surge in success is the continued improvement of models withlarger data set sizes. In contrast, classical machine learningalgorithms, like logistic regression, stop improving in accuracy atsmaller data set sizes. As such, the separation of compute resources andstorage resources may also allow independent scaling of each tier,avoiding many of the complexities inherent in managing both together. Asthe data set size grows or new data sets are considered, a scale outstorage system must be able to expand easily. Similarly, if moreconcurrent training is required, additional GPUs or other computeresources can be added without concern for their internal storage.Furthermore, the storage systems described above may make building,operating, and growing an AI system easier due to the random readbandwidth provided by the storage systems, the ability to of the storagesystems to randomly read small files (50 KB) high rates (meaning that noextra effort is required to aggregate individual data points to makelarger, storage-friendly files), the ability of the storage systems toscale capacity and performance as either the dataset grows or thethroughput requirements grow, the ability of the storage systems tosupport files or objects, the ability of the storage systems to tuneperformance for large or small files (i.e., no need for the user toprovision filesystems), the ability of the storage systems to supportnon-disruptive upgrades of hardware and software even during productionmodel training, and for many other reasons.

Small file performance of the storage tier may be critical as many typesof inputs, including text, audio, or images will be natively stored assmall files. If the storage tier does not handle small files well, anextra step will be required to pre-process and group samples into largerfiles. Storage, built on top of spinning disks, that relies on SSD as acaching tier, may fall short of the performance needed. Because trainingwith random input batches results in more accurate models, the entiredata set must be accessible with full performance. SSD caches onlyprovide high performance for a small subset of the data and will beineffective at hiding the latency of spinning drives.

Although the preceding paragraphs discuss deep learning applications,readers will appreciate that the storage systems described herein mayalso be part of a distributed deep learning (‘DDL’) platform to supportthe execution of DDL algorithms. Distributed deep learning may can beused to significantly accelerate deep learning with distributedcomputing on GPUs (or other form of accelerator or computer programinstruction executor), such that parallelism can be achieved. Inaddition, the output of training machine learning and deep learningmodels, such as a fully trained machine learning model, may be used fora variety of purposes and in conjunction with other tools. For example,trained machine learning models may be used in conjunction with toolslike Core ML to integrate a broad variety of machine learning modeltypes into an application. In fact, trained models may be run throughCore ML converter tools and inserted into a custom application that canbe deployed on compatible devices. The storage systems described abovemay also be paired with other technologies such as TensorFlow, anopen-source software library for dataflow programming across a range oftasks that may be used for machine learning applications such as neuralnetworks, to facilitate the development of such machine learning models,applications, and so on.

Readers will further appreciate that the systems described above may bedeployed in a variety of ways to support the democratization of AI, asAI becomes more available for mass consumption. The democratization ofAI may include, for example, the ability to offer AI as aPlatform-as-a-Service, the growth of Artificial general intelligenceofferings, the proliferation of Autonomous level 4 and Autonomous level5 vehicles, the availability of autonomous mobile robots, thedevelopment of conversational AI platforms, and many others. Forexample, the systems described above may be deployed in cloudenvironments, edge environments, or other environments that are usefulin supporting the democratization of AI. As part of the democratizationof AI, a movement may occur from narrow AI that consists of highlyscoped machine learning solutions that target a particular task toartificial general intelligence where the use of machine learning isexpanded to handle a broad range of use cases that could essentiallyperform any intelligent task that a human could perform and could learndynamically, much like a human.

The storage systems described above may also be used in a neuromorphiccomputing environment. Neuromorphic computing is a form of computingthat mimics brain cells. To support neuromorphic computing, anarchitecture of interconnected “neurons” replace traditional computingmodels with low-powered signals that go directly between neurons formore efficient computation. Neuromorphic computing may make use ofvery-large-scale integration (VLSI) systems containing electronic analogcircuits to mimic neuro-biological architectures present in the nervoussystem, as well as analog, digital, mixed-mode analog/digital VLSI, andsoftware systems that implement models of neural systems for perception,motor control, or multisensory integration.

Readers will appreciate that the storage systems described above may beconfigured to support the storage or use of (among other types of data)blockchains. Such blockchains may be embodied as a continuously growinglist of records, called blocks, which are linked and secured usingcryptography. Each block in a blockchain may contain a hash pointer as alink to a previous block, a timestamp, transaction data, and so on.Blockchains may be designed to be resistant to modification of the dataand can serve as an open, distributed ledger that can recordtransactions between two parties efficiently and in a verifiable andpermanent way. This makes blockchains potentially suitable for therecording of events, medical records, and other records managementactivities, such as identity management, transaction processing, andothers. In addition to supporting the storage and use of blockchaintechnologies, the storage systems described above may also support thestorage and use of derivative items such as, for example, open sourceblockchains and related tools that are part of the IBM′ Hyperledgerproject, permissioned blockchains in which a certain number of trustedparties are allowed to access the block chain, blockchain products thatenable developers to build their own distributed ledger projects, andothers. Readers will appreciate that blockchain technologies may impacta wide variety of industries and sectors. For example, blockchaintechnologies may be used in real estate transactions as blockchain basedcontracts whose use can eliminate the need for 3^(rd) parties and enableself-executing actions when conditions are met. Likewise, universalhealth records can be created by aggregating and placing a person'shealth history onto a blockchain ledger for any healthcare provider, orpermissioned health care providers, to access and update.

Readers will appreciate that the usage of blockchains is not limited tofinancial transactions, contracts, and the like. In fact, blockchainsmay be leveraged to enable the decentralized aggregation, ordering,timestamping and archiving of any type of information, includingstructured data, correspondence, documentation, or other data. Throughthe usage of blockchains, participants can provably and permanentlyagree on exactly what data was entered, when and by whom, withoutrelying on a trusted intermediary. For example, SAP's recently launchedblockchain platform, which supports MultiChain and Hyperledger Fabric,targets a broad range of supply chain and other non-financialapplications.

One way to use a blockchain for recording data is to embed each piece ofdata directly inside a transaction. Every blockchain transaction may bedigitally signed by one or more parties, replicated to a plurality ofnodes, ordered and timestamped by the chain's consensus algorithm, andstored permanently in a tamper-proof way. Any data within thetransaction will therefore be stored identically but independently byevery node, along with a proof of who wrote it and when. The chain'susers are able to retrieve this information at any future time. Thistype of storage may be referred to as on-chain storage. On-chain storagemay not be particularly practical, however, when attempting to store avery large dataset. As such, in accordance with embodiments of thepresent disclosure, blockchains and the storage systems described hereinmay be leveraged to support on-chain storage of data as well asoff-chain storage of data.

Off-chain storage of data can be implemented in a variety of ways andcan occur when the data itself is not stored within the blockchain. Forexample, in one embodiment, a hash function may be utilized and the dataitself may be fed into the hash function to generate a hash value. Insuch an example, the hashes of large pieces of data may be embeddedwithin transactions, instead of the data itself. Each hash may serve asa commitment to its input data, with the data itself being storedoutside of the blockchain. Readers will appreciate that any blockchainparticipant that needs an off-chain piece of data cannot reproduce thedata from its hash, but if the data can be retrieved in some other way,then the on-chain hash serves to confirm who created it and when. Justlike regular on-chain data, the hash may be embedded inside a digitallysigned transaction, which was included in the chain by consensus.

Readers will appreciate that, in other embodiments, alternatives toblockchains may be used to facilitate the decentralized storage ofinformation. For example, one alternative to a blockchain that may beused is a blockweave. While conventional blockchains store everytransaction to achieve validation, a blockweave permits securedecentralization without the usage of the entire chain, thereby enablinglow cost on-chain storage of data. Such blockweaves may utilize aconsensus mechanism that is based on proof of access (PoA) and proof ofwork (PoW). While typical PoW systems only depend on the previous blockin order to generate each successive block, the PoA algorithm mayincorporate data from a randomly chosen previous block. Combined withthe blockweave data structure, miners do not need to store all blocks(forming a blockchain), but rather can store any previous blocks forminga weave of blocks (a blockweave). This enables increased levels ofscalability, speed and low-cost and reduces the cost of data storage inpart because miners need not store all blocks, thereby resulting in asubstantial reduction in the amount of electricity that is consumedduring the mining process because, as the network expands, electricityconsumption decreases because a blockweave demands less and less hashingpower for consensus as data is added to the system. Furthermore,blockweaves may be deployed on a decentralized storage network in whichincentives are created to encourage rapid data sharing. Suchdecentralized storage networks may also make use of blockshadowingtechniques, where nodes only send a minimal block “shadow” to othernodes that allows peers to reconstruct a full block, instead oftransmitting the full block itself.

The storage systems described above may, either alone or in combinationwith other computing devices, be used to support in-memory computingapplications. In memory computing involves the storage of information inRAM that is distributed across a cluster of computers. In-memorycomputing helps business customers, including retailers, banks andutilities, to quickly detect patterns, analyze massive data volumes onthe fly, and perform their operations quickly. Readers will appreciatethat the storage systems described above, especially those that areconfigurable with customizable amounts of processing resources, storageresources, and memory resources (e.g., those systems in which bladesthat contain configurable amounts of each type of resource), may beconfigured in a way so as to provide an infrastructure that can supportin-memory computing. Likewise, the storage systems described above mayinclude component parts (e.g., NVDIMMs, 3D crosspoint storage thatprovide fast random access memory that is persistent) that can actuallyprovide for an improved in-memory computing environment as compared toin-memory computing environments that rely on RAM distributed acrossdedicated servers.

In some embodiments, the storage systems described above may beconfigured to operate as a hybrid in-memory computing environment thatincludes a universal interface to all storage media (e.g., RAM, flashstorage, 3D crosspoint storage). In such embodiments, users may have noknowledge regarding the details of where their data is stored but theycan still use the same full, unified API to address data. In suchembodiments, the storage system may (in the background) move data to thefastest layer available—including intelligently placing the data independence upon various characteristics of the data or in dependenceupon some other heuristic. In such an example, the storage systems mayeven make use of existing products such as Apache Ignite and GridGain tomove data between the various storage layers, or the storage systems maymake use of custom software to move data between the various storagelayers. The storage systems described herein may implement variousoptimizations to improve the performance of in-memory computing such as,for example, having computations occur as close to the data as possible.

Readers will further appreciate that in some embodiments, the storagesystems described above may be paired with other resources to supportthe applications described above. For example, one infrastructure couldinclude primary compute in the form of servers and workstations whichspecialize in using General-purpose computing on graphics processingunits (‘GPGPU’) to accelerate deep learning applications that areinterconnected into a computation engine to train parameters for deepneural networks. Each system may have Ethernet external connectivity,InfiniBand external connectivity, some other form of externalconnectivity, or some combination thereof. In such an example, the GPUscan be grouped for a single large training or used independently totrain multiple models. The infrastructure could also include a storagesystem such as those described above to provide, for example, ascale-out all-flash file or object store through which data can beaccessed via high-performance protocols such as NFS, S3, and so on. Theinfrastructure can also include, for example, redundant top-of-rackEthernet switches connected to storage and compute via ports in MLAGport channels for redundancy. The infrastructure could also includeadditional compute in the form of whitebox servers, optionally withGPUs, for data ingestion, pre-processing, and model debugging. Readerswill appreciate that additional infrastructures are also be possible.

Readers will appreciate that the systems described above may be bettersuited for the applications described above relative to other systemsthat may include, for example, a distributed direct-attached storage(DDAS) solution deployed in server nodes. Such DDAS solutions may bebuilt for handling large, less sequential accesses but may be less ableto handle small, random accesses. Readers will further appreciate thatthe storage systems described above may be utilized to provide aplatform for the applications described above that is preferable to theutilization of cloud-based resources as the storage systems may beincluded in an on-site or in-house infrastructure that is more secure,more locally and internally managed, more robust in feature sets andperformance, or otherwise preferable to the utilization of cloud-basedresources as part of a platform to support the applications describedabove. For example, services built on platforms such as IBM's Watson mayrequire a business enterprise to distribute individual user information,such as financial transaction information or identifiable patientrecords, to other institutions. As such, cloud-based offerings of AI asa service may be less desirable than internally managed and offered AIas a service that is supported by storage systems such as the storagesystems described above, for a wide array of technical reasons as wellas for various business reasons.

Readers will appreciate that the storage systems described above, eitheralone or in coordination with other computing machinery may beconfigured to support other AI related tools. For example, the storagesystems may make use of tools like ONXX or other open neural networkexchange formats that make it easier to transfer models written indifferent AI frameworks. Likewise, the storage systems may be configuredto support tools like Amazon's Gluon that allow developers to prototype,build, and train deep learning models. In fact, the storage systemsdescribed above may be part of a larger platform, such as IBM™ CloudPrivate for Data, that includes integrated data science, dataengineering and application building services. Such platforms mayseamlessly collect, organize, secure, and analyze data across anenterprise, as well as simplify hybrid data management, unified datagovernance and integration, data science and business analytics with asingle solution.

Readers will further appreciate that the storage systems described abovemay also be deployed as an edge solution. Such an edge solution may bein place to optimize cloud computing systems by performing dataprocessing at the edge of the network, near the source of the data. Edgecomputing can push applications, data and computing power (i.e.,services) away from centralized points to the logical extremes of anetwork. Through the use of edge solutions such as the storage systemsdescribed above, computational tasks may be performed using the computeresources provided by such storage systems, data may be storage usingthe storage resources of the storage system, and cloud-based servicesmay be accessed through the use of various resources of the storagesystem (including networking resources). By performing computationaltasks on the edge solution, storing data on the edge solution, andgenerally making use of the edge solution, the consumption of expensivecloud-based resources may be avoided and, in fact, performanceimprovements may be experienced relative to a heavier reliance oncloud-based resources.

While many tasks may benefit from the utilization of an edge solution,some particular uses may be especially suited for deployment in such anenvironment. For example, devices like drones, autonomous cars, robots,and others may require extremely rapid processing—so fast, in fact, thatsending data up to a cloud environment and back to receive dataprocessing support may simply be too slow. Likewise, machines likelocomotives and gas turbines that generate large amounts of informationthrough the use of a wide array of data-generating sensors may benefitfrom the rapid data processing capabilities of an edge solution. As anadditional example, some IoT devices such as connected video cameras maynot be well-suited for the utilization of cloud-based resources as itmay be impractical (not only from a privacy perspective, securityperspective, or a financial perspective) to send the data to the cloudsimply because of the pure volume of data that is involved. As such,many tasks that really on data processing, storage, or communicationsmay be better suited by platforms that include edge solutions such asthe storage systems described above.

Consider a specific example of inventory management in a warehouse,distribution center, or similar location. A large inventory,warehousing, shipping, order-fulfillment, manufacturing or otheroperation has a large amount of inventory on inventory shelves, and highresolution digital cameras that produce a firehose of large data. All ofthis data may be taken into an image processing system, which may reducethe amount of data to a firehose of small data. All of the small datamay be stored on-premises in storage. The on-premises storage, at theedge of the facility, may be coupled to the cloud, for external reports,real-time control and cloud storage. Inventory management may beperformed with the results of the image processing, so that inventorycan be tracked on the shelves and restocked, moved, shipped, modifiedwith new products, or discontinued/obsolescent products deleted, etc.The above scenario is a prime candidate for an embodiment of theconfigurable processing and storage systems described above. Acombination of compute-only blades and offload blades suited for theimage processing, perhaps with deep learning on offload-FPGA oroffload-custom blade(s) could take in the firehose of large data fromall of the digital cameras, and produce the firehose of small data. Allof the small data could then be stored by storage nodes, operating withstorage units in whichever combination of types of storage blades besthandles the data flow. This is an example of storage and functionacceleration and integration. Depending on external communication needswith the cloud, and external processing in the cloud, and depending onreliability of network connections and cloud resources, the system couldbe sized for storage and compute management with bursty workloads andvariable conductivity reliability. Also, depending on other inventorymanagement aspects, the system could be configured for scheduling andresource management in a hybrid edge/cloud environment.

The storage systems described above may alone, or in combination withother computing resources, serves as a network edge platform thatcombines compute resources, storage resources, networking resources,cloud technologies and network virtualization technologies, and so on.As part of the network, the edge may take on characteristics similar toother network facilities, from the customer premise and backhaulaggregation facilities to Points of Presence (PoPs) and regional datacenters. Readers will appreciate that network workloads, such as VirtualNetwork Functions (VNFs) and others, will reside on the network edgeplatform. Enabled by a combination of containers and virtual machines,the network edge platform may rely on controllers and schedulers thatare no longer geographically co-located with the data processingresources. The functions, as microservices, may split into controlplanes, user and data planes, or even state machines, allowing forindependent optimization and scaling techniques to be applied. Such userand data planes may be enabled through increased accelerators, boththose residing in server platforms, such as FPGAs and Smart NICs, andthrough SDN-enabled merchant silicon and programmable ASICs.

The storage systems described above may also be optimized for use in bigdata analytics. Big data analytics may be generally described as theprocess of examining large and varied data sets to uncover hiddenpatterns, unknown correlations, market trends, customer preferences andother useful information that can help organizations make more-informedbusiness decisions. Big data analytics applications enable datascientists, predictive modelers, statisticians and other analyticsprofessionals to analyze growing volumes of structured transaction data,plus other forms of data that are often left untapped by conventionalbusiness intelligence (BI) and analytics programs. As part of thatprocess, semi-structured and unstructured data such as, for example,internet clickstream data, web server logs, social media content, textfrom customer emails and survey responses, mobile-phone call-detailrecords, IoT sensor data, and other data may be converted to astructured form. Big data analytics is a form of advanced analytics,which involves complex applications with elements such as predictivemodels, statistical algorithms and what-if analyses powered byhigh-performance analytics systems.

The storage systems described above may also support (includingimplementing as a system interface) applications that perform tasks inresponse to human speech. For example, the storage systems may supportthe execution intelligent personal assistant applications such as, forexample, Amazon's Alexa, Apple Siri, Google Voice, Samsung Bixby,Microsoft Cortana, and others. While the examples described in theprevious sentence make use of voice as input, the storage systemsdescribed above may also support chatbots, talkbots, chatterbots, orartificial conversational entities or other applications that areconfigured to conduct a conversation via auditory or textual methods.Likewise, the storage system may actually execute such an application toenable a user such as a system administrator to interact with thestorage system via speech. Such applications are generally capable ofvoice interaction, music playback, making to-do lists, setting alarms,streaming podcasts, playing audiobooks, and providing weather, traffic,and other real time information, such as news, although in embodimentsin accordance with the present disclosure, such applications may beutilized as interfaces to various system management operations.

The storage systems described above may also implement AI platforms fordelivering on the vision of self-driving storage. Such AI platforms maybe configured to deliver global predictive intelligence by collectingand analyzing large amounts of storage system telemetry data points toenable effortless management, analytics and support. In fact, suchstorage systems may be capable of predicting both capacity andperformance, as well as generating intelligent advice on workloaddeployment, interaction and optimization. Such AI platforms may beconfigured to scan all incoming storage system telemetry data against alibrary of issue fingerprints to predict and resolve incidents inreal-time, before they impact customer environments, and captureshundreds of variables related to performance that are used to forecastperformance load.

The storage systems described above may support the serialized orsimultaneous execution artificial intelligence applications, machinelearning applications, data analytics applications, datatransformations, and other tasks that collectively may form an AIladder. Such an AI ladder may effectively be formed by combining suchelements to form a complete data science pipeline, where existdependencies between elements of the AI ladder. For example, AI mayrequire that some form of machine learning has taken place, machinelearning may require that some form of analytics has taken place,analytics may require that some form of data and informationarchitecting has taken place, and so on. As such, each element may beviewed as a rung in an AI ladder that collectively can form a completeand sophisticated AI solution.

The storage systems described above may also, either alone or incombination with other computing environments, be used to deliver an AIeverywhere experience where AI permeates wide and expansive aspects ofbusiness and life. For example, AI may play an important role in thedelivery of deep learning solutions, deep reinforcement learningsolutions, artificial general intelligence solutions, autonomousvehicles, cognitive computing solutions, commercial UAVs or drones,conversational user interfaces, enterprise taxonomies, ontologymanagement solutions, machine learning solutions, smart dust, smartrobots, smart workplaces, and many others. The storage systems describedabove may also, either alone or in combination with other computingenvironments, be used to deliver a wide range of transparently immersiveexperiences where technology can introduce transparency between people,businesses, and things. Such transparently immersive experiences may bedelivered as augmented reality technologies, connected homes, virtualreality technologies, brain—computer interfaces, human augmentationtechnologies, nanotube electronics, volumetric displays, 4D printingtechnologies, or others. The storage systems described above may also,either alone or in combination with other computing environments, beused to support a wide variety of digital platforms. Such digitalplatforms can include, for example, 5G wireless systems and platforms,digital twin platforms, edge computing platforms, IoT platforms, quantumcomputing platforms, serverless PaaS, software-defined security,neuromorphic computing platforms, and so on.

Readers will appreciate that some transparently immersive experiencesmay involve the use of digital twins of various “things” such as people,places, processes, systems, and so on. Such digital twins and otherimmersive technologies can alter the way that humans interact withtechnology, as conversational platforms, augmented reality, virtualreality and mixed reality provide a more natural and immersiveinteraction with the digital world. In fact, digital twins may be linkedwith the real-world, perhaps even in real-time, to understand the stateof a thing or system, respond to changes, and so on. Because digitaltwins consolidate massive amounts of information on individual assetsand groups of assets (even possibly providing control of those assets),digital twins may communicate with each other to digital factory modelsof multiple linked digital twins.

The storage systems described above may also be part of a multi-cloudenvironment in which multiple cloud computing and storage services aredeployed in a single heterogeneous architecture. In order to facilitatethe operation of such a multi-cloud environment, DevOps tools may bedeployed to enable orchestration across clouds. Likewise, continuousdevelopment and continuous integration tools may be deployed tostandardize processes around continuous integration and delivery, newfeature rollout and provisioning cloud workloads. By standardizing theseprocesses, a multi-cloud strategy may be implemented that enables theutilization of the best provider for each workload. Furthermore,application monitoring and visibility tools may be deployed to moveapplication workloads around different clouds, identify performanceissues, and perform other tasks. In addition, security and compliancetools may be deployed for to ensure compliance with securityrequirements, government regulations, and so on. Such a multi-cloudenvironment may also include tools for application delivery and smartworkload management to ensure efficient application delivery and helpdirect workloads across the distributed and heterogeneousinfrastructure, as well as tools that ease the deployment andmaintenance of packaged and custom applications in the cloud and enableportability amongst clouds. The multi-cloud environment may similarlyinclude tools for data portability.

The storage systems described above may be used as a part of a platformto enable the use of crypto-anchors that may be used to authenticate aproduct's origins and contents to ensure that it matches a blockchainrecord associated with the product. Such crypto-anchors may take manyforms including, for example, as edible ink, as a mobile sensor, as amicrochip, and others. Similarly, as part of a suite of tools to securedata stored on the storage system, the storage systems described abovemay implement various encryption technologies and schemes, includinglattice cryptography. Lattice cryptography can involve constructions ofcryptographic primitives that involve lattices, either in theconstruction itself or in the security proof. Unlike public-key schemessuch as the RSA, Diffie-Hellman or Elliptic-Curve cryptosystems, whichare easily attacked by a quantum computer, some lattice-basedconstructions appear to be resistant to attack by both classical andquantum computers.

A quantum computer is a device that performs quantum computing. Quantumcomputing is computing using quantum-mechanical phenomena, such assuperposition and entanglement. Quantum computers differ fromtraditional computers that are based on transistors, as such traditionalcomputers require that data be encoded into binary digits (bits), eachof which is always in one of two definite states (0 or 1). In contrastto traditional computers, quantum computers use quantum bits, which canbe in superpositions of states. A quantum computer maintains a sequenceof qubits, where a single qubit can represent a one, a zero, or anyquantum superposition of those two qubit states. A pair of qubits can bein any quantum superposition of 4 states, and three qubits in anysuperposition of 8 states. A quantum computer with n qubits cangenerally be in an arbitrary superposition of up to 2{circumflex over( )}n different states simultaneously, whereas a traditional computercan only be in one of these states at any one time. A quantum Turingmachine is a theoretical model of such a computer.

The storage systems described above may also be paired withFPGA-accelerated servers as part of a larger AI or ML infrastructure.Such FPGA-accelerated servers may reside near (e.g., in the same datacenter) the storage systems described above or even incorporated into anappliance that includes one or more storage systems, one or moreFPGA-accelerated servers, networking infrastructure that supportscommunications between the one or more storage systems and the one ormore FPGA-accelerated servers, as well as other hardware and softwarecomponents. Alternatively, FPGA-accelerated servers may reside within acloud computing environment that may be used to perform compute-relatedtasks for AI and ML jobs. Any of the embodiments described above may beused to collectively serve as a FPGA-based AI or ML platform. Readerswill appreciate that, in some embodiments of the FPGA-based AI or MLplatform, the FPGAs that are contained within the FPGA-acceleratedservers may be reconfigured for different types of ML models (e.g.,LSTMs, CNNs, GRUs). The ability to reconfigure the FPGAs that arecontained within the FPGA-accelerated servers may enable theacceleration of a ML or AI application based on the most optimalnumerical precision and memory model being used. Readers will appreciatethat by treating the collection of FPGA-accelerated servers as a pool ofFPGAs, any CPU in the data center may utilize the pool of FPGAs as ashared hardware microservice, rather than limiting a server to dedicatedaccelerators plugged into it.

The FPGA-accelerated servers and the GPU-accelerated servers describedabove may implement a model of computing where, rather than keeping asmall amount of data in a CPU and running a long stream of instructionsover it as occurred in more traditional computing models, the machinelearning model and parameters are pinned into the high-bandwidth on-chipmemory with lots of data streaming though the high-bandwidth on-chipmemory. FPGAs may even be more efficient than GPUs for this computingmodel, as the FPGAs can be programmed with only the instructions neededto run this kind of computing model.

The storage systems described above may be configured to provideparallel storage, for example, through the use of a parallel file systemsuch as BeeGFS. Such parallel files systems may include a distributedmetadata architecture. For example, the parallel file system may includea plurality of metadata servers across which metadata is distributed, aswell as components that include services for clients and storageservers. Through the use of a parallel file system, file contents may bedistributed over a plurality of storage servers using striping andmetadata may be distributed over a plurality of metadata servers on adirectory level, with each server storing a part of the complete filesystem tree. Readers will appreciate that in some embodiments, thestorage servers and metadata servers may run in userspace on top of anexisting local file system. Furthermore, dedicated hardware is notrequired for client services, the metadata servers, or the hardwareservers as metadata servers, storage servers, and even the clientservices may be run on the same machines.

Readers will appreciate that, in part due to the emergence of many ofthe technologies discussed above including mobile devices, cloudservices, social networks, big data analytics, and so on, an informationtechnology platform may be needed to integrate all of these technologiesand drive new business opportunities by quickly deliveringrevenue-generating products, services, and experiences—rather thanmerely providing the technology to automate internal business processes.Information technology organizations may need to balance resources andinvestments needed to keep core legacy systems up and running while alsointegrating technologies to build an information technology platformthat can provide the speed and flexibility in areas such as, forexample, exploiting big data, managing unstructured data, and workingwith cloud applications and services. One possible embodiment of such aninformation technology platform is a composable infrastructure thatincludes fluid resource pools, such as many of the systems describedabove that, can meet the changing needs of applications by allowing forthe composition and recomposition of blocks of disaggregated compute,storage, and fabric infrastructure. Such a composable infrastructure canalso include a single management interface to eliminate complexity and aunified API to discover, search, inventory, configure, provision,update, and diagnose the composable infrastructure.

For further explanation, FIG. 4A sets forth diagrams of metadatarepresentations that may be implemented as a structured collection ofmetadata objects that, together, may represent a logical volume ofstorage data, or a portion of a logical volume such as a dataset, inaccordance with some embodiments of the present disclosure. Metadatarepresentations 450, 454, and 460 may be stored within a storage system(406), and one or more metadata representations may be generated andmaintained for each of multiple storage objects, such as volumes, orportions of volumes, stored within a storage system (406).

While other types of structured collections of the metadata objects arepossible, in this example, metadata representations may be structured asa directed acyclic graph (DAG) of nodes, where, to maintain efficientaccess to any given node, the DAG may be structured and balancedaccording to various methods. For example, a DAG for a metadatarepresentation may be defined as a type of B-tree, and balancedaccordingly in response to changes to the structure of the metadatarepresentation, where changes to the metadata representation may occurin response to changes to, or additions to, underlying data representedby the metadata representation. While in this example, there are onlytwo levels for the sake of simplicity, in other examples, metadatarepresentations may span across multiple levels and may include hundredsor thousands of nodes, where each node may include any number of linksto other nodes.

Further, in this example, the leaves of a metadata representation mayinclude pointers to the stored data for a volume, or portion of avolume, where a logical address, or a volume and offset, may be used toidentify and navigate through the metadata representation to reach oneor more leaf nodes that reference stored data corresponding to thelogical address. For example, a volume (452) may be represented by ametadata representation (450), which includes multiple metadata objectnodes (452, 452A-452N), where leaf nodes (452A-452N) include pointers torespective data objects (453A-453N, 457). Data objects may be any sizeunit of data within a storage system (406). For example, data objects(453A-453N, 457) may each be a logical extent, where logical extents maybe some specified size, such as 1 MB, 4 MB, or some other size.

In some examples, a metadata representation may include information thatdescribes content, structure, or content and structure of the underlyingstored data. As one example, if the metadata representation represents adataset for a structured database, then the metadata representation mayinclude information corresponding to a database schema, includingtables, columns, fields, relationships, views, indexes, packages,procedures, functions, queues, triggers, types, sequences, links, amongother elements descriptive of data stored within the database. In thisway, for this examples, the metadata representation may be used todetermine or identify particular types of data and/or particular tables,columns, fields, or another other aspects of a schema described above.Given such an identification or determination, a storage controller mayencrypt or obfuscate the identified or determined portions of thedatabase in accordance with a security policy. In other examples, if themetadata representation represents a dataset for an unstructureddatabase, then the metadata representation may include informationcorresponding to types of data or to data that is tagged or annotated.In this way, similar to the example where the metadata representationrepresents structured data, a storage controller may determine a type ofdata or data with a particular tag or annotation to identify portions ofthe unstructured dataset to encrypt or obfuscate in accordance with asecurity policy.

In this example, a snapshot (456) may be created as a snapshot of astorage object, in this case, a volume (452), where at the point in timewhen the snapshot (456) is created, the metadata representation (454)for the snapshot (456) includes all of the metadata objects for themetadata representation (450) for the volume (452). Further, in responseto creation of the snapshot (456), the metadata representation (454) maybe designated to be read only. However, the volume (452) sharing themetadata representation may continue to be modified, and while at themoment the snapshot is created, the metadata representations for thevolume (452) and the snapshot (456) are identical, as modifications aremade to data corresponding to the volume (452), and in response to themodifications, the metadata representations for the volume (452) and thesnapshot (456) may diverge and become different.

For example, given a metadata representation (450) to represent a volume(452) and a metadata representation (454) to represent a snapshot (456),the storage system (406) may receive an I/O operation that writes todata that is ultimately stored within a particular data object (453B),where the data object (453B) is pointed to by a leaf node pointer(452B), and where the leaf node pointer (452B) is part of both metadatarepresentations (450, 454). In response to the write operation, the readonly data objects (453A-453N) referred to by the metadata representation(454) remain unchanged, and the pointer (452B) may also remainunchanged. However, the metadata representation (450), which representsthe current volume (452), is modified to include a new data object tohold the data written by the write operation, where the modifiedmetadata representation is depicted as the metadata representation(460). Further, the write operation may be directed to only a portion ofthe data object (453B), and consequently, the new data object (457) mayinclude a copy of previous contents of the data object (453B) inaddition to the payload for the write operation.

In this example, as part of processing the write operation, the metadatarepresentation (460) for the volume (452) is modified to remove anexisting metadata object pointer (452B) and to include a new metadataobject pointer (458), where the new metadata object pointer (458) isconfigured to point to a new data object (457), where the new dataobject (457) stores the data written by the write operation. Further,the metadata representation (460) for the volume (452) continues toinclude all metadata objects included within the previous metadatarepresentation (450)—with the exclusion of the metadata object pointer(452B) that referenced the target data object, where the metadata objectpointer (452B) continues to reference the read only data object (453B)that would have been overwritten.

In this way, using metadata representations, a volume or a portion of avolume may be considered to be snapshotted, or considered to be copied,by creating metadata objects, and without actual duplication of dataobjects—where the duplication of data objects may be deferred until awrite operation is directed at one of the read only data objectsreferred to by the metadata representations.

In other words, an advantage of using a metadata representation torepresent a volume is that a snapshot or a copy of a volume may becreated and be accessible in constant order time, and specifically, inthe time it takes to create a metadata object for the snapshot or copy,and to create a reference for the snapshot or copy metadata object tothe existing metadata representation for the volume being snapshotted orcopied.

As an example use, a virtualized copy-by-reference may make use of ametadata representation in a manner that is similar to the use of ametadata representation in creating a snapshot of a volume—where ametadata representation for a virtualized copy-by-reference may oftencorrespond to a portion of a metadata representation for an entirevolume. An example implementation of virtualized copy-by-reference maybe within the context of a virtualized storage system, where multipleblock ranges within and between volumes may reference a unified copy ofstored data. In such virtualized storage system, the metadata describedabove may be used to handle the relationship between virtual, orlogical, addresses and physical, or real, addresses—in other words, themetadata representation of stored data enables a virtualized storagesystem that may be considered flash-friendly in that it reduces, orminimizes, wear on flash memory.

In some examples, logical extents may be combined in various ways,including as simple collections or as logically related address rangeswithin some larger-scale logical extent that is formed as a set oflogical extent references. These larger combinations could also be givenlogical extent identities of various kinds, and could be furthercombined into still larger logical extents or collections. Acopy-on-write status could apply to various layers, and in various waysdepending on the implementation. For example, a copy on write statusapplied to a logical collection of logical collections of extents mightresult in a copied collection retaining references to unchanged logicalextents and the creation of copied-on-write logical extents (throughcopying references to any unchanged stored data blocks as needed) whenonly part of the copy-on-write logical collection is changed.

Deduplication, volume snapshots, or block range snapshots may beimplemented in this model through combinations of referencing storeddata blocks, or referencing logical extents, or marking logical extents(or identified collections of logical extents) as copy-on-write.

Further, with flash storage systems, stored data blocks may be organizedand grouped together in various ways as collections are written out intopages that are part of larger erase blocks. Eventual garbage collectionof deleted or replaced stored data blocks may involve moving contentstored in some number of pages elsewhere so that an entire erase blockcan be erased and prepared for reuse. This process of selecting physicalflash pages, eventually migrating and garbage collecting them, and thenerasing flash erase blocks for reuse may or may not be coordinated,driven by, or performed by the aspect of a storage system that is alsohandling logical extents, deduplication, compression, snapshots, virtualcopying, or other storage system functions. A coordinated or drivenprocess for selecting pages, migrating pages, garbage collecting anderasing erase blocks may further take into account variouscharacteristics of the flash memory device cells, pages, and eraseblocks such as number of uses, aging predictions, adjustments to voltagelevels or numbers of retries needed in the past to recover stored data.They may also take into account analysis and predictions across allflash memory devices within the storage system.

To continue with this example, where a storage system may be implementedbased on directed acyclic graphs comprising logical extents, logicalextents can be categorized into two types: leaf logical extents, whichreference some amount of stored data in some way, and composite logicalextents, which reference other leaf or composite logical extents.

A leaf extent can reference data in a variety of ways. It can pointdirectly to a single range of stored data (e.g., 64 kilobytes of data),or it can be a collection of references to stored data (e.g., a 1megabyte “range” of content that maps some number of virtual blocksassociated with the range to physically stored blocks). In the lattercase, these blocks may be referenced using some identity, and someblocks within the range of the extent may not be mapped to anything.Also, in that latter case, these block references need not be unique,allowing multiple mappings from virtual blocks within some number oflogical extents within and across some number of volumes to map to thesame physically stored blocks. Instead of stored block references, alogical extent could encode simple patterns: for example, a block whichis a string of identical bytes could simply encode that the block is arepeated pattern of identical bytes.

A composite logical extent can be a logical range of content with somevirtual size, which comprises a plurality of maps that each map from asubrange of the composite logical extent logical range of content to anunderlying leaf or composite logical extent. Transforming a requestrelated to content for a composite logical extent, then, involves takingthe content range for the request within the context of the compositelogical extent, determining which underlying leaf or composite logicalextents that request maps to, and transforming the request to apply toan appropriate range of content within those underlying leaf orcomposite logical extents.

Volumes, or files or other types of storage objects, can be described ascomposite logical extents. Thus, these presented storage objects can beorganized using this extent model.

Depending on implementation, leaf or composite logical extents could bereferenced from a plurality of other composite logical extents,effectively allowing inexpensive duplication of larger collections ofcontent within and across volumes. Thus, logical extents can be arrangedessentially within an acyclic graph of references, each ending in leaflogical extents. This can be used to make copies of volumes, to makesnapshots of volumes, or as part of supporting virtual range copieswithin and between volumes as part of EXTENDED COPY or similar types ofoperations.

An implementation may provide each logical extent with an identity whichcan be used to name it. This simplifies referencing, since thereferences within composite logical extents become lists comprisinglogical extent identities and a logical subrange corresponding to eachsuch logical extent identity. Within logical extents, each stored datablock reference may also be based on some identity used to name it.

To support these duplicated uses of extents, we can add a furthercapability: copy-on-write logical extents. When a modifying operationaffects a copy-on-write leaf or composite logical extent the logicalextent is copied, with the copy being a new reference and possiblyhaving a new identity (depending on implementation). The copy retainsall references or identities related to underlying leaf or compositelogical extents, but with whatever modifications result from themodifying operation. For example, a WRITE, WRITE SAME, XDWRITEREAD,XPWRITE, or COMPARE AND WRITE request may store new blocks in thestorage system (or use deduplication techniques to identify existingstored blocks), resulting in modifying the corresponding leaf logicalextents to reference or store identities to a new set of blocks,possibly replacing references and stored identities for a previous setof blocks. Alternately, an UNMAP request may modify a leaf logicalextent to remove one or more block references. In both types of cases, aleaf logical extent is modified. If the leaf logical extent iscopy-on-write, then a new leaf logical extent will be created that isformed by copying unaffected block references from the old extent andthen replacing or removing block references based on the modifyingoperation.

A composite logical extent that was used to locate the leaf logicalextent may then be modified to store the new leaf logical extentreference or identity associated with the copied and modified leaflogical extent as a replacement for the previous leaf logical extent. Ifthat composite logical extent is copy-on-write, then a new compositelogical extent is created as a new reference or with a new identity, andany unaffected references or identities to its underlying logicalextents are copied to that new composite logical extent, with theprevious leaf logical extent reference or identity being replaced withthe new leaf logical extent reference or identity.

This process continues further backward from referenced extent toreferencing composite extent, based on the search path through theacyclic graph used to process the modifying operation, with allcopy-on-write logical extents being copied, modified, and replaced.

These copied leaf and composite logical extents can then drop thecharacteristic of being copy on write, so that further modifications donot result in an additional copy. For example, the first time someunderlying logical extent within a copy-on-write “parent” compositeextent is modified, that underlying logical extent may be copied andmodified, with the copy having a new identity which is then written intoa copied and replaced instance of the parent composite logical extent.However, a second time some other underlying logical extent is copiedand modified and with that other underlying logical extent copy's newidentity being written to the parent composite logical extent, theparent can then be modified in place with no further copy and replacenecessary on behalf of references to the parent composite logicalextent.

Modifying operations to new regions of a volume or of a compositelogical extent for which there is no current leaf logical extent maycreate a new leaf logical extent to store the results of thosemodifications. If that new logical extent is to be referenced from anexisting copy-on-write composite logical extent, then that existingcopy-on-write composite logical extent will be modified to reference thenew logical extent, resulting in another copy, modify, and replacesequence of operations similar to the sequence for modifying an existingleaf logical extent.

If a parent composite logical extent cannot be grown large enough (basedon implementation) to cover an address range associated that includesnew leaf logical extents to create for a new modifying operation, thenthe parent composite logical extent may be copied into two or more newcomposite logical extents which are then referenced from a single“grandparent” composite logical extent which yet again is a newreference or a new identity. If that grandparent logical extent isitself found through another composite logical extent that iscopy-on-write, then that another composite logical extent will be copiedand modified and replaced in a similar way as described in previousparagraphs. This copy-on-write model can be used as part of implementingsnapshots, volume copies, and virtual volume address range copies withina storage system implementation based on these directed acyclic graphsof logical extents. To make a snapshot as a read-only copy of anotherwise writable volume, a graph of logical extents associated withthe volume is marked copy-on-write and a reference to the originalcomposite logical extents are retained by the snapshot. Modifyingoperations to the volume will then make logical extent copies as needed,resulting in the volume storing the results of those modifyingoperations and the snapshots retaining the original content. Volumecopies are similar, except that both the original volume and the copiedvolume can modify content resulting in their own copied logical extentgraphs and subgraphs.

Virtual volume address range copies can operate either by copying blockreferences within and between leaf logical extents (which does notitself involve using copy-on-write techniques unless changes to blockreferences modifies copy-on-write leaf logical extents). Alternately,virtual volume address range copies can duplicate references to leaf orcomposite logical extents, which works well for volume address rangecopies of larger address ranges. Further, this allows graphs to becomedirected acyclic graphs of references rather than merely referencetrees. Copy-on-write techniques associated with duplicated logicalextent references can be used to ensure that modifying operations to thesource or target of a virtual address range copy will result in thecreation of new logical extents to store those modifications withoutaffecting the target or the source that share the same logical extentimmediately after the volume address range copy operation.

Input/output operations for pods may also be implemented based onreplicating directed acyclic graphs of logical extents. For example,each storage system within a pod could implement private graphs oflogical extents, such that the graphs on one storage system for a podhave no particular relationship to the graphs on any second storagesystem for the pod. However, there is value in synchronizing the graphsbetween storage systems in a pod. This can be useful forresynchronization and for coordinating features such as asynchronous orsnapshot based replication to remote storage systems. Further, it may beuseful for reducing some overhead for handling the distribution ofsnapshot and copy related processing. In such a model, keeping thecontent of a pod in sync across all in-sync storage systems for a pod isessentially the same as keeping graphs of leaf and composite logicalextents in sync for all volumes across all in-sync storage systems forthe pod, and ensuring that the content of all logical extents isin-sync. To be in sync, matching leaf and composite logical extentsshould either have the same identity or should have mappable identities.Mapping could involve some set of intermediate mapping tables or couldinvolve some other type of identity translation. In some cases,identities of blocks mapped by leaf logical extents could also be keptin sync.

In a pod implementation based on a leader and followers, with a singleleader for each pod, the leader can be in charge of determining anychanges to the logical extent graphs. If a new leaf or composite logicalextent is to be created, it can be given an identity. If an existingleaf or composite logical extent is to be copied to form a new logicalextent with modifications, the new logical extent can be described as acopy of a previous logical extent with some set of modifications. If anexisting logical extent is to be split, the split can be described alongwith the new resulting identities. If a logical extent is to bereferenced as an underlying logical extent from some additionalcomposite logical extent, that reference can be described as a change tothe composite logical extent to reference that underlying logicalextent.

Modifying operations in a pod thus comprises distributing descriptionsof modifications to logical extent graphs (where new logical extents arecreated to extend content or where logical extents are copied, modified,and replaced to handle copy-on-write states related to snapshots, volumecopies, and volume address range copies) and distributing descriptionsand content for modifications to the content of leaf logical extents. Anadditional benefit that comes from using metadata in the form ofdirected acyclic graphs, as described above, is that I/O operations thatmodify stored data in physical storage may be given effect at a userlevel through the modification of metadata corresponding to the storeddata in physical storage—without modifying the stored data in physicalstorage. In the disclosed embodiments of storage systems, where thephysical storage may be a solid state drive, the wear that accompaniesmodifications to flash memory may be avoided or reduced due to I/Ooperations being given effect through the modifications of the metadatarepresenting the data targeted by the I/O operations instead of throughthe reading, erasing, or writing of flash memory. Further, as notedabove, in such a virtualized storage system, the metadata describedabove may be used to handle the relationship between virtual, orlogical, addresses and physical, or real, addresses—in other words, themetadata representation of stored data enables a virtualized storagesystem that may be considered flash-friendly in that it reduces, orminimizes, wear on flash memory.

Leader storage systems may perform their own local operations toimplement these descriptions in the context of their local copy of thepod dataset and the local storage system's metadata. Further, thein-sync followers perform their own separate local operations toimplement these descriptions in the context of their separate local copyof the pod dataset and their separate local storage system's metadata.When both leader and follower operations are complete, the result iscompatible graphs of logical extents with compatible leaf logical extentcontent. These graphs of logical extents then become a type of “commonmetadata” as described in previous examples. This common metadata can bedescribed as dependencies between modifying operations and requiredcommon metadata. Transformations to graphs can be described as separateoperations within a set of or more predicates that may describerelationships, such as dependencies, with one or more other operations.In other words, interdependencies between operations may be described asa set of precursors that one operation depends on in some way, where theset of precursors may be considered predicates that must be true for anoperation to complete. A fuller description of predicates may be foundwithin application Ser. No. 15/696,418, which is included herein byreference in its entirety. Alternately, each modifying operation thatrelies on a particular same graph transformation that has not yet beenknown to complete across the pod can include the parts of any graphtransformation that it relies on. Processing an operation descriptionthat identifies a “new” leaf or composite logical extent that alreadyexists can avoid creating the new logical extent since that part wasalready handled in the processing of some earlier operation, and caninstead implement only the parts of the operation processing that changethe content of leaf or composite logical extents. It is a role of theleader to ensure that transformations are compatible with each other.For example, we can start with two writes come that come in for a pod. Afirst write replaces a composite logical extent A with a copy of formedas composite logical extent B, replaces a leaf logical extent C with acopy as leaf logical extent D and with modifications to store thecontent for the second write, and further writes leaf logical extent Dinto composite logical extent B. Meanwhile, a second write implies thesame copy and replacement of composite logical extent A with compositelogical extent B but copies and replaces a different leaf logical extentE with a logical extent F which is modified to store the content of thesecond write, and further writes logical extent F into logical extent B.In that case, the description for the first write can include thereplacement of A with B and C with D and the writing of D into compositelogical extent B and the writing of the content of the first write intoleaf extend B; and, the description of the second write can include thereplacement of A with B and E with F and the writing of F into compositelogical extent B, along with the content of the second write which willbe written to leaf extent F. A leader or any follower can thenseparately process the first write or the second write in any order, andthe end result is B copying and replacing A, D copying and replacing C,F copying replacing E, and D and F being written into composite logicalextent B. A second copy of A to form B can be avoided by recognizingthat B already exists. In this way, a leader can ensure that the podmaintains compatible common metadata for a logical extent graph acrossin-sync storage systems for a pod.

Given an implementation of storage systems using directed acyclic graphsof logical extents, recovery of pods based on replicated directedacyclic graphs of logical extents may be implemented. Specifically, inthis example, recovery in pods may be based on replicated extent graphsthen involves recovering consistency of these graphs as well asrecovering content of leaf logical extents. In this implementation ofrecovery, operations may include querying for graph transformations thatare not known to have completed on all in-sync storage systems for apod, as well as all leaf logical extent content modifications that arenot known to have completed across all storage systems for the pod. Suchquerying could be based on operations since some coordinated checkpoint,or could simply be operations not known to have completed where eachstorage system keeps a list of operations during normal operation thathave not yet been signaled as completed. In this example, graphtransformations are straightforward: a graph transformation may createnew things, copy old things to new things, and copy old things into twoor more split new things, or they modify composite extents to modifytheir references to other extents. Any stored operation descriptionfound on any in-sync storage system that creates or replaces any logicalextent can be copied and performed on any other storage system that doesnot yet have that logical extent. Operations that describe modificationsto leaf or composite logical extents can apply those modifications toany in-sync storage system that had not yet applied them, as long as theinvolved leaf or composite logical extents have been recovered properly.

In another example, as an alternative to using a logical extent graph,storage may be implemented based on a replicated content-addressablestore. In a content-addressable store, for each block of data (forexample, every 512 bytes, 4096 bytes, 8192 bytes or even 16384 bytes) aunique hash value (sometimes also called a fingerprint) is calculated,based on the block content, so that a volume or an extent range of avolume can be described as a list of references to blocks that have aparticular hash value. In a synchronously replicated storage systemimplementation based on references to blocks with the same hash value,replication could involve a first storage system receiving blocks,calculating fingerprints for those blocks, identifying block referencesfor those fingerprints, and delivering changes to one or a plurality ofadditional storage systems as updates to the mapping of volume blocks toreferenced blocks. If a block is found to have already been stored bythe first storage system, that storage system can use its reference toname the reference in each of the additional storage systems (eitherbecause the reference uses the same hash value or because an identifierfor the reference is either identical or can be mapped readily).Alternately, if a block is not found by the first storage system, thencontent of the first storage system may be delivered to other storagesystems as part of the operation description along with the hash valueor identity associated with that block content. Further, each in-syncstorage system's volume descriptions are then updated with the new blockreferences. Recovery in such a store may then include comparing recentlyupdated block references for a volume. If block references differbetween different in-sync storage systems for a pod, then one version ofeach reference can be copied to other storage systems to make themconsistent. If the block reference on one system does not exist, then itbe copied from some storage system that does store a block for thatreference. Virtual copy operations can be supported in such a block orhash reference store by copying the references as part of implementingthe virtual copy operation.

As described above, metadata may be synchronized among storage systemsthat are synchronously replicating a dataset. Such metadata may bereferred to as common metadata, or shared metadata, that is stored by astorage system on behalf of a pod related to the mapping of segments ofcontent stored within the pod to virtual address within storage objectswithin the pod, where information related to those mappings issynchronized between member storage systems for the pod to ensurecorrect behavior—or better performance—for storage operations related tothe pod. In some examples, a storage object may implement a volume or asnapshot. The synchronized metadata may include: (a) information to keepvolume content mappings synchronized among the storage systems in thepod; (b) tracking data for recovery checkpoints or for in-progress writeoperations; (c) information related to the delivery of data and mappinginformation to a remote storage system for asynchronous or periodicreplication.

Information to keep volume content mappings synchronized among thestorage systems in the pod may enable efficient creating of snapshots,which in turn enables that subsequent updates, copies of snapshots, orsnapshot removals may be performed efficiently and consistently acrossthe pod member storage systems.

Tracking data for recovery checkpoints or for in-progress writeoperations may enable efficient crash recovery and efficient detectionof content or volume mappings that may have been partially or completelyapplied on individual storage systems for a pod, but that may not havebeen completely applied on other storage systems for the pod.

Information related to the delivery of data and mapping information to aremote storage system for asynchronous or periodic replication mayenable more than one member storage system for a pod to serve as asource for the replicated pod content with minimal concerns for dealingwith mismatches in mapping and differencing metadata used to driveasynchronous or periodic replication.

In some examples, shared metadata may include descriptions for, orindications of, a named grouping, or identifiers for, of one or morevolumes or one or more storage objects that are a subset of an entiresynchronously replicated dataset for a pod—where such a of volumes orstorage objects of a dataset may be referred to as a consistency group.A consistency group may be defined to specify a subset of volumes orstorage objects of the dataset to be used for consistent snapshots,asynchronous replication, or periodic replication. In some examples, aconsistency group may be calculated dynamically, such as by includingall volumes connected to a particular set of hosts or host networkports, or that are connected to a particular set of applications orvirtual machines or containers, where the applications, virtualmachines, or containers may operate on external server systems or mayoperate on one or more of the storage systems that are members of a pod.In other examples, a consistency group may be defined according to userselections of a type of data or set of data, or specifications of aconsistency group similar to the dynamic calculation, where a user mayspecify, for example through a command or management console, that aparticular, or named, consistency group be created to include allvolumes connected to a particular set of hosts or host network ports, orbe created to include data for a particular set of applications orvirtual machines or containers.

In an example using a consistency group, a first consistency groupsnapshot of a consistency group may include a first set of snapshot forall volumes or other storage objects that are members of the consistencygroup at the time of the first dataset snapshot, with a secondconsistency group snapshot of the same consistency group including asecond set of snapshots for the volumes or other storage objects thatare members of the consistency group at the time of the second datasetsnapshot. In other examples, a snapshot of the dataset may be stored onone or more target storage systems in an asynchronous manner. Similarly,asynchronous replication of a consistency group may account for dynamicchanges to member volumes and other storage objects of the consistencygroup, where consistency group snapshots of the consistency group ateither the source or the target of the asynchronous replication linkinclude the volumes and other storage objects that are members inrelationship to the consistency group at the time that the datasetsnapshot relates to. In the case of a target of an asynchronousreplication connection, the time that the dataset snapshot relates todepends on the dynamic dataset of the sender as it was received and wasin process at the time of the consistency group snapshot on the target.For example, if a target of an asynchronous replication is, say, 2000operations behind, where some of those operations are consistency groupmember changes, where a first set of such changes are more than 2000operations ago for the source, and a second set of changes are withinthe last 2000, then a consistency group snapshot at that time on thetarget will account for the first set of member changes and will notaccount for the second set of changes. Other uses of the target ofasynchronous replication may similarly account for the nature of thetime of the dataset for the consistency group in determining the volumesor other storage objects (and their content) for those uses. Forexample, in the same case of asynchronous replication being 2000operations behind, use of the target for a disaster recovery failovermight start from a dataset that includes the volumes and other storageobjects (and their content) as they were 2000 operations ago at thesource. In this discussion, concurrent operations at the source (e.g.,writes, storage object creations or deletions, changes to propertiesthat affect inclusion or exclusion of volumes or other storage objectsor other data from a consistency group, or other operations that were inprogress and not signaled as completed at a same point in time) mightnot have a single well-defined ordering, so the count of operations onlyneeds to represent some plausible ordering based on any allowed orderingof concurrent operations on the source.

As another example using consistency groups, in the case of periodicreplication based on replication of consistency group snapshots, eachreplicated consistency group snapshot would include the volumes andother storage objects at the time each consistency group snapshot wasformed on the source. Ensuring that membership in a consistency group iskept consistent by using common, or shared, metadata, ensures that afault—or other change which may cause the source of replication, or thesystem that forms a dataset snapshot, to switch from one storage systemin a pod to another—does not lose information needed for properlyhandling those consistency group snapshots or the consistency groupreplication. Further, this type of handling may allow for multiplestorage systems that are members of a pod to concurrently serve assource systems for asynchronous or periodic replication.

Further, synchronized metadata describing mapping of segments to storageobjects is not limited to mappings themselves, and may includeadditional information such as sequence numbers (or some other value foridentifying stored data), timestamps, volume/snapshot relationships,checkpoint identities, trees or graphs defining hierarchies, or directedgraphs of mapping relationships, among other storage system information.

For further explanation, FIG. 4B sets forth diagrams of a storageservice (490) for providing storage layer data obfuscation in accordancewith some embodiments of the present disclosure. The storage service(490) may implement data storage features described above with referenceto FIGS. 1A-1D, FIGS. 2A-2G, FIG. 3, and FIG. 4A as the storage service(490) may include some or all of the components described above. Forexample, using the storage service (490), a client device may access orinitiate any of the data storage operations described above with regardto FIGS. 1A-1D and FIGS. 2A-2G, where those data storage operations areimplemented by the storage service (490). In this example, the storageservice (490) may include storage elements (493A-493S) for storing data,where the storage elements (493A-493S) may be virtual or physicalstorage devices or components.

In some examples, a storage layer may be implemented within a physicalcomputing system, such as Pure™ FlashBlade™, where the storage layer isprovided by one or more controllers for one or more storage systems, asdescribed above with regard to FIGS. 1-3B. However, in other examples,as depicted within FIG. 4B, a storage layer may be provided by a storageservice (490) implemented within a cloud computing environment providedby a cloud service provider.

In either example above, whether implemented within a physical computingsystem or a cloud computing environment, data obfuscation may beimplemented by an obfuscation engine (492) that is configured to performsteps (510, 512, 514) depicted in FIG. 5 for obfuscating portions of adataset on a source during the creation of an obfuscated snapshot orobfuscated backup, where the created obfuscated snapshot or obfuscatedbackup includes obfuscated data, thereby preventing the obfuscated datafrom being visible or accessed at a target computer system.

In this example, the obfuscation engine (492) being implemented by astorage service (490) may be implemented within a cloud computingenvironment, such as a cloud computing environment provided by a cloudservices provider (482) described in FIG. 3 as cloud service provider(302). In one example, the obfuscation engine (492) may be implementedwithin a containerized, lightweight SQL interpreter within, as oneexample, Purity™ Run, to provide automated obfuscation of a database ordataset.

In some embodiments, the storage service (490) may communicate with amanagement console (496) either directly in communication to a hostcomputer system or client devices (480A-480M), or the storage service(490) may provide an API to a management console that executes from aremote location, such as within a different, remote cloud computingenvironment provided by a different, remote cloud services provider—orwithin a same cloud service provider (482), such as within a storagemanagement service (495) in communication with the storage service(490). In this example, using the management console, a user may selecta volume, volumes, dataset, or a database—in addition to the user beingprovided, via the management console, options for selecting data toobfuscate, and parameters for specifying a schedule for generatingobfuscated snapshots, obfuscated backups, or initiating replication ofobfuscated versions of the selected volume, dataset, or database.

Storage service (490) may include a module such as a service interface(491) to provide a user interface to different client devices(450A-450M) to receive data storage operations or data managementoperations, and to provide updates or status information. In someexamples, a storage service (490) may be implemented within a remotelyaccessible data center that is accessible to client devices over anetwork, in other implementations, a storage service (490) may beimplemented within a local computing environment that includes clientdevices sharing a local area network, wide area network, or some othertype of shared network. Further, the service interface (491) may includemultiple access points available simultaneously to multiple clients(450A-450M), one or more applications (484), or one or more virtualinstances or virtual machines (485), where each client may access aprovided user interface and an accompanying set of programmable APIs. Inthis example, the storage service (490) may be available to clientdevices (450A-450M) over a network (481), which may be any type ofcomputer network, such as a local area network or such as the Internet.In this example, one of the applications (484) may include a lightweightSQL interpreter, in the case where the dataset being obfuscated is adatabase.

For further explanation, FIG. 5 sets forth a flow chart illustrating anexample method of implementing storage layer data obfuscation inaccordance with some embodiments of the present disclosure. Althoughdepicted in less detail, the storage system (500) may implement datastorage features described above with reference to FIGS. 1A-1D, 2A-2G,3A, 3B, and 4 as the storage system (500) may include some or all of thecomponents described above.

In the example computing environment depicted in FIG. 5, a storagesystem (500) may be connected—either directly or over a communicationfabric or network—with a given computer system (550) or multiplecomputer systems or storage systems. In this example, the storage system(500) may implement an obfuscation engine (501), such as the obfuscationengine (492) described above in FIG. 4B, that is configured to performsteps (510, 512, 514) for obfuscating portions of a dataset on a sourceduring the creation of an obfuscated snapshot or obfuscated backup,where the created obfuscated snapshot or obfuscated backup includesobfuscated data, thereby preventing the obfuscated data from beingvisible or accessed at a target computer system.

In these examples, data obfuscation of portions of a dataset may bevaluable to protect sensitive data available where the obfuscatedsnapshot or obfuscated backup is created on a source that is trusted orsecure and then delivered or sent to a target that is not trusted orsecure. Data may be determined to be sensitive or not in accordance witha security policy, where the security policy may be user-specified ordetermined automatically by the obfuscation engine (501)—for example,the automatic determination of the security policy may be implementedusing one or more of the machine learning techniques described above. Asone example, a secure or trusted environment may be a productionenvironment and an unsecure or untrusted environment may be adevelopment environment; however, generally, a trusted or securecomputing environment may be specified by a security policy and anuntrusted or unsecure environment may also be specified by the securitypolicy. Further, in some examples, a security policy may specify accesslimitations—for users or clients—that indicate that users or clients mayonly access an obfuscated dataset if the dataset has been properly, orcorrectly obfuscated. Further, an obfuscated dataset may be tagged withmetadata specifying the security policy that was used in generating theobfuscated dataset.

Another technical advantage of the obfuscation engine (501) is that, incontrast to traditional methods, an obfuscated snapshot may be createdon a source system and restored on a target system using the depictedsteps (510, 512, 514)—without intermediate involvement of a user.

Further, in other examples, instead of the obfuscation engine (501)being implemented by a storage system (500), the obfuscation engine(501) may be implemented as a service instantiated within a cloudcomputing environment, such as a cloud computing environment provided bya cloud services provider (302) depicted in FIG. 3. In one example, theobfuscation engine (501) may be implemented within a containerized,lightweight SQL interpreter within, as one example, Purity™ Run, toprovide automated obfuscation of a database or dataset.

In some examples, where a user specifies data types to obfuscate orspecifies fields or columns or other elements of a database toobfuscate, the user may be presented with a graphical user interface(GUI) that enables the user to select data types, columns, fields, orelements of a database to obfuscate. In this example, user setting maybe stored and used for subsequent snapshots or backups.

In some examples, a storage system (500) may obfuscate data that isreceived as part of an input/output operation, where a storagecontroller may receive a write operation and, in response to the storagecontroller determining that the write operation includes data that, inaccordance with the security policy, is to be obfuscated during thegeneration of an obfuscated snapshot, generates an indication, tag, orannotation, within a metadata representation for the dataset that atleast a portion of the write operation data is to be obfuscated. In thisway, the metadata representation, such as those depicted in FIG. 4, maybe used in generating an obfuscated snapshot, obfuscated backup, orobfuscated clone. In other examples, responsive to a controller for thestorage system (500) receiving the data for a payload of a writeoperation and in further response to identifying that the data includesdata to be obfuscated according to the security policy—stores theoriginal, non-obfuscated data, stores an obfuscated version of the dataor portion of the data, and stores information indicating acorrespondence between the obfuscated version of the data and thenon-obfuscated version of the data. In this way, a controller for thestorage system (500) may reference the information indicating thecorrespondence between the obfuscated data and the original,non-obfuscated data as a basis for generating an obfuscated snapshot, anobfuscated backup, an obfuscated clone, or initiating a replicationoperation for an obfuscated version of the dataset or database.

In some embodiments, the storage system (500) may provide a managementconsole either directly to a host computer system, or the storage system(500) may provide an API to a management console that executes from aremote location, such as within a cloud computing environment providedby a remote cloud services provider. In this example, using themanagement console, a user may select a volume, volumes, dataset, or adatabase—in addition to the user being provided, via the managementconsole, options for selecting data to obfuscate, and parameters forspecifying a schedule for generating obfuscated snapshots, obfuscatedbackups, or initiating replication of obfuscated versions of theselected volume, dataset, or database.

In some implementations, the storage system (500) may implement multipletypes of storage system protocols, including synchronous replication ofdata, as described in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 15/842,850, whichis herein incorporated in its entirety for all purposes. In otherimplementations, the storage system (500) may implement asynchronousdata replication to storage systems or computer systems that are notpart of synchronous replication described above—as described within U.S.patent application Ser. No. 16/050,698—where the asynchronousreplication may be modified in accordance with the operation of theobfuscation engine (501) described herein.

The example method depicted in FIG. 5 includes determining (510) asubset of a dataset (552) to obfuscate in accordance with a securitypolicy (554); generating (512), based at least in part on the securitypolicy (554), an obfuscated snapshot (556) of the dataset (552) that isrepresentative of the dataset (552) with the subset of the dataset (552)obfuscated; and sending (514), to a target computer system (550), theobfuscated snapshot (556) from which a restored version (558) of thedataset (552) includes the subset of the dataset (552) obfuscated.

Determining (510) the subset of the dataset (552) to obfuscate inaccordance with the security policy (554) may be implemented asdescribed above with regard to examples of a user selecting data typesor data columns, fields, or other aspects of a schema to obfuscate, andwith regard to automatic determination by the storage system (500) ofthe types of data or of the portions of a schema are to be obfuscated.

Generating (512), based at least in part on the security policy (554),the obfuscated snapshot (556) of the dataset (552) that isrepresentative of the dataset (552) with the subset of the dataset (552)obfuscated may be implemented as described above with regard toreplacing portions of original, non-obfuscated data with obfuscated databy one or more of: using the metadata representation to annotateobfuscated data as it is stored, obfuscating data in-line as part ofhandling a data storage operation, or dynamically as an obfuscatedsnapshot is being replicated to a remote, untrusted computingenvironment—where the security policy (554) may be specified by a useror determined automatically by the storage system (500).

Providing (514), to one or more target computing systems (550), theobfuscated snapshot from which a restored version of the dataset (552)includes the subset of the dataset (552) obfuscated may be implementedby one or more network communication protocols described above withreference to FIGS. 1-3B, where the one or more target computer systems(550) may be in direct communication with the storage system (500), orwhere the target storage system (550) may be in communication with thestorage system (500) over one or more computer networks. Further,providing (514) the obfuscated dataset (556) may be implemented bysending a copy of the obfuscated dataset from the storage system (500)to one or more target computer systems (550). However, in some examples,instead copying the obfuscated dataset (556), providing (514) theobfuscated snapshot (556) may be implemented by the storage system(500), or a storage environment for the storage system (500), directlyproviding, or making available for a data transfer, the stored,obfuscated snapshot to one or more of the target computer systems (550).

For further explanation, FIG. 6 sets forth a flow chart illustrating anexample method of implementing storage layer data obfuscation inaccordance with some embodiments of the present disclosure. Althoughdepicted in less detail, the storage system (500) may implement datastorage features described above with reference to FIGS. 1A-1D, 2A-2G,3A, 3B, and 4 as the storage system (500) may include some or all of thecomponents described above.

The example method depicted in FIG. 6 is similar to the example methoddepicted in FIG. 5 in that the example method depicted in FIG. 6 alsoincludes: determining (510) a subset of a dataset (552) to obfuscate inaccordance with a security policy (554); generating (512), based atleast in part on the security policy (554), an obfuscated snapshot (556)of the dataset (552) that is representative of the dataset (552) withthe subset of the dataset (552) obfuscated; and providing (514), to oneor more target computer systems (550), the obfuscated snapshot (556)from which a restored version of the dataset (552) includes the subsetof the dataset (552) obfuscated.

However, the example method depicted in FIG. 6 further specifies thatgenerating (512), based at least in part on the security policy (554),the obfuscated snapshot (556) of the dataset (552) that isrepresentative of the dataset (552) with the subset of the datasetobfuscated may be implemented by interpreting (602) the dataset (552) inaccordance with a schema to determine one or more columns of data toobfuscate and/or interpreting (604) the dataset (552) to determine oneor more types of data to obfuscate.

Interpreting (602) the dataset (552) in accordance with a schema todetermine one or more columns of data to obfuscate may be implemented asdescribed above with reference to a schema defining one or more of:tables, columns, fields, relationships, views, indexes, packages,procedures, functions, queues, triggers, types, sequences, links, amongother elements descriptive of data stored within the database.

Interpreting (604) the dataset (552) to determine one or more types ofdata to obfuscate may be implemented by a storage controller accessingmetadata describing type information for the dataset (552), and usingthe type information to match against a specified type of data in thedataset (552) to obfuscate.

Example embodiments are described largely in the context of a fullyfunctional computer system. Readers of skill in the art will recognize,however, that the present disclosure also may be embodied in a computerprogram product disposed upon computer readable storage media for usewith any suitable data processing system. Such computer readable storagemedia may be any storage medium for machine-readable information,including magnetic media, optical media, or other suitable media.Examples of such media include magnetic disks in hard drives ordiskettes, compact disks for optical drives, magnetic tape, and othersas will occur to those of skill in the art. Persons skilled in the artwill immediately recognize that any computer system having suitableprogramming means will be capable of executing the steps of the methodas embodied in a computer program product. Persons skilled in the artwill recognize also that, although some of the example embodimentsdescribed in this specification are oriented to software installed andexecuting on computer hardware, nevertheless, alternative embodimentsimplemented as firmware or as hardware are well within the scope of thepresent disclosure.

Embodiments can include be a system, a method, and/or a computer programproduct. The computer program product may include a computer readablestorage medium (or media) having computer readable program instructionsthereon for causing a processor to carry out aspects of the presentdisclosure.

The computer readable storage medium can be a tangible device that canretain and store instructions for use by an instruction executiondevice. The computer readable storage medium may be, for example, but isnot limited to, an electronic storage device, a magnetic storage device,an optical storage device, an electromagnetic storage device, asemiconductor storage device, or any suitable combination of theforegoing. A non-exhaustive list of more specific examples of thecomputer readable storage medium includes the following: a portablecomputer diskette, a hard disk, a random access memory (RAM), aread-only memory (ROM), an erasable programmable read-only memory (EPROMor Flash memory), a static random access memory (SRAM), a portablecompact disc read-only memory (CD-ROM), a digital versatile disk (DVD),a memory stick, a floppy disk, a mechanically encoded device such aspunch-cards or raised structures in a groove having instructionsrecorded thereon, and any suitable combination of the foregoing. Acomputer readable storage medium, as used herein, is not to be construedas being transitory signals per se, such as radio waves or other freelypropagating electromagnetic waves, electromagnetic waves propagatingthrough a waveguide or other transmission media (e.g., light pulsespassing through a fiber-optic cable), or electrical signals transmittedthrough a wire.

Computer readable program instructions described herein can bedownloaded to respective computing/processing devices from a computerreadable storage medium or to an external computer or external storagedevice via a network, for example, the Internet, a local area network, awide area network and/or a wireless network. The network may comprisecopper transmission cables, optical transmission fibers, wirelesstransmission, routers, firewalls, switches, gateway computers and/oredge servers. A network adapter card or network interface in eachcomputing/processing device receives computer readable programinstructions from the network and forwards the computer readable programinstructions for storage in a computer readable storage medium withinthe respective computing/processing device.

Computer readable program instructions for carrying out operations ofthe present disclosure may be assembler instructions,instruction-set-architecture (ISA) instructions, machine instructions,machine dependent instructions, microcode, firmware instructions,state-setting data, or either source code or object code written in anycombination of one or more programming languages, including an objectoriented programming language such as Smalltalk, C++ or the like, andconventional procedural programming languages, such as the “C”programming language or similar programming languages. The computerreadable program instructions may execute entirely on the user'scomputer, partly on the user's computer, as a stand-alone softwarepackage, partly on the user's computer and partly on a remote computeror entirely on the remote computer or server. In the latter scenario,the remote computer may be connected to the user's computer through anytype of network, including a local area network (LAN) or a wide areanetwork (WAN), or the connection may be made to an external computer(for example, through the Internet using an Internet Service Provider).In some embodiments, electronic circuitry including, for example,programmable logic circuitry, field-programmable gate arrays (FPGA), orprogrammable logic arrays (PLA) may execute the computer readableprogram instructions by utilizing state information of the computerreadable program instructions to personalize the electronic circuitry,in order to perform aspects of the present disclosure.

Aspects of the present disclosure are described herein with reference toflowchart illustrations and/or block diagrams of methods, apparatus(systems), and computer program products according to some embodimentsof the disclosure. It will be understood that each block of theflowchart illustrations and/or block diagrams, and combinations ofblocks in the flowchart illustrations and/or block diagrams, can beimplemented by computer readable program instructions.

These computer readable program instructions may be provided to aprocessor of a general purpose computer, special purpose computer, orother programmable data processing apparatus to produce a machine, suchthat the instructions, which execute via the processor of the computeror other programmable data processing apparatus, create means forimplementing the functions/acts specified in the flowchart and/or blockdiagram block or blocks. These computer readable program instructionsmay also be stored in a computer readable storage medium that can directa computer, a programmable data processing apparatus, and/or otherdevices to function in a particular manner, such that the computerreadable storage medium having instructions stored therein comprises anarticle of manufacture including instructions which implement aspects ofthe function/act specified in the flowchart and/or block diagram blockor blocks.

The computer readable program instructions may also be loaded onto acomputer, other programmable data processing apparatus, or other deviceto cause a series of operational steps to be performed on the computer,other programmable apparatus or other device to produce a computerimplemented process, such that the instructions which execute on thecomputer, other programmable apparatus, or other device implement thefunctions/acts specified in the flowchart and/or block diagram block orblocks.

The flowchart and block diagrams in the Figures illustrate thearchitecture, functionality, and operation of possible implementationsof systems, methods, and computer program products according to variousembodiments of the present disclosure. In this regard, each block in theflowchart or block diagrams may represent a module, segment, or portionof instructions, which comprises one or more executable instructions forimplementing the specified logical function(s). In some alternativeimplementations, the functions noted in the block may occur out of theorder noted in the figures. For example, two blocks shown in successionmay, in fact, be executed substantially concurrently, or the blocks maysometimes be executed in the reverse order, depending upon thefunctionality involved. It will also be noted that each block of theblock diagrams and/or flowchart illustration, and combinations of blocksin the block diagrams and/or flowchart illustration, can be implementedby special purpose hardware-based systems that perform the specifiedfunctions or acts or carry out combinations of special purpose hardwareand computer instructions.

Readers will appreciate that the steps described herein may be carriedout in a variety ways and that no particular ordering is required. Itwill be further understood from the foregoing description thatmodifications and changes may be made in various embodiments of thepresent disclosure without departing from its true spirit. Thedescriptions in this specification are for purposes of illustration onlyand are not to be construed in a limiting sense. The scope of thepresent disclosure is limited only by the language of the followingclaims.

What is claimed is:
 1. A method for storage layer data obfuscation, themethod comprising: determining a subset of a dataset to obfuscate inaccordance with a security policy; generating, based at least in part onthe security policy, an obfuscated snapshot of the dataset that isrepresentative of the dataset with the subset of the dataset obfuscated;and providing, to one or more target computer systems, the obfuscatedsnapshot from which a restored version of the dataset includes thesubset of the dataset obfuscated.
 2. The method of claim 1, whereingenerating the obfuscated snapshot is performed by a controller of astorage system.
 3. The method of claim 2, wherein the storage system iswithin a trusted computing environment in accordance with the securitypolicy, and wherein the target computer system is not within a trustedcomputing environment in accordance with the security policy.
 4. Themethod of claim 1, wherein the dataset comprises a structured databasethat is structured in accordance with a schema.
 5. The method of claim4, wherein generating the obfuscated snapshot further comprises:interpreting the dataset in accordance with the schema to determine oneor more columns of data to obfuscate.
 6. The method of claim 1, whereinthe dataset is unstructured data, and wherein generating the obfuscatedsnapshot further comprises: interpreting the dataset to determine one ormore types of data to obfuscate, wherein the one or more types arespecified by one or more of: a user or one or more rule sets.
 7. Themethod of claim 1, wherein the security policy specifies permissions forusers within different computing environment, wherein the securitypolicy specifies one or more portions or types of data correspond to oneor more of the permissions for users, wherein the security policyspecifies access limitations to allow access only to datasets that havebeen correctly obfuscated, and wherein the obfuscated dataset is taggedwith metadata specifying the security policy used to obfuscate theobfuscated dataset.
 8. An apparatus for storage layer data obfuscationcomprising: a computer processor configured to implement an obfuscationengine; and a computer memory operatively coupled to the computerprocessor, the computer memory having disposed within it computerprogram instructions implementing the obfuscation engine that, whenexecuted by the computer processor, cause the apparatus to carry out thesteps of: determining a subset of a dataset to obfuscate in accordancewith a security policy; generating, based at least in part on thesecurity policy, an obfuscated snapshot of the dataset that isrepresentative of the dataset with the subset of the dataset obfuscated;and providing, to one or more target computer systems, the obfuscatedsnapshot from which a restored version of the dataset includes thesubset of the dataset obfuscated.
 9. The apparatus of claim 8, whereingenerating the obfuscated snapshot is performed by a controller of astorage system.
 10. The apparatus of claim 9, wherein the storage systemis within a trusted computing environment in accordance with thesecurity policy, and wherein the target computer system is not within atrusted computing environment in accordance with the security policy.11. The apparatus of claim 8, wherein the dataset comprises a structureddatabase that is structured in accordance with a schema.
 12. Theapparatus of claim 11, wherein the computer program instructionsimplementing the obfuscation engine further cause the apparatus to carryout the steps of: interpreting the dataset in accordance with the schemato determine one or more columns of data to obfuscate.
 13. The apparatusof claim 8, wherein the computer program instructions implementing theobfuscation engine further cause the apparatus to carry out the stepsof: interpreting the dataset to determine one or more types of data toobfuscate, wherein the one or more types are specified by one or moreof: a user or one or more rule sets.
 14. The apparatus of claim 8,wherein the security policy specifies permissions for users withindifferent computing environment, wherein the security policy specifiesone or more portions or types of data correspond to one or more of thepermissions for users, wherein the security policy specifies accesslimitations to allow access only to datasets that have been correctlyobfuscated, and wherein the obfuscated dataset is tagged with metadataspecifying the security policy used to obfuscate the obfuscated dataset.15. A computer program product for storage layer data obfuscation, thecomputer program product disposed upon a computer readable medium, thecomputer program product comprising computer program instructions that,when executed, cause a computer to carry out the steps of: determining asubset of a dataset to obfuscate in accordance with a security policy;generating, based at least in part on the security policy, an obfuscatedsnapshot of the dataset that is representative of the dataset with thesubset of the dataset obfuscated; and providing, to one or more targetcomputer systems, the obfuscated snapshot from which a restored versionof the dataset includes the subset of the dataset obfuscated.
 16. Thecomputer program product of claim 15, wherein generating the obfuscatedsnapshot is performed by a controller of a storage system.
 17. Thecomputer program product of claim 16, wherein the storage system iswithin a trusted computing environment in accordance with the securitypolicy, and wherein the target computer system is not within a trustedcomputing environment in accordance with the security policy.
 18. Thecomputer program product of claim 15, wherein the dataset comprises astructured database that is structured in accordance with a schema. 19.The computer program product of claim 18, the program instructions, whenexecuted, further cause the computer to carry out the steps of:interpreting the dataset in accordance with the schema to determine oneor more columns of data to obfuscate.
 20. The computer program productof claim 15, the program instructions, when executed, further cause thecomputer to carry out the steps of: interpreting the dataset todetermine one or more types of data to obfuscate, wherein the one ormore types are specified by one or more of: a user or one or more rulesets.